The prevalence of DARKNESS
because darkness is a powerful
element to create an atmosphere
of gloom , oppression and mystery
ATMOSPHERE
SETTINGS
ANCIENT SETTINGS like
isolated
castles,mysterious
abbeys and convents
with hidden passages,
dungeons and secret
rooms
Importance given to TERROR ,
characterized by obscurity ,
uncertainty and HORROR,
characterized by evil and atrocity
Use of SUPERNATURAL BEINGS ,
like vampires, monsters , ghosts
and witches
THE GOTHIC NOVEL
CATHOLIC
COUNTRIES as the
setting of terrible
crimes
CHARACTERS
Sensitive and honourable
HEROES who save heroines
against villains
VILLAINS: satanic terrifying
male characters , often
victims of their negative
impulses
HEROINES dominated by
exaggerated passions
and fears – fears of
imprisonment, of rape
and of personal violation
1 Gothic
fiction
 Gothic fiction is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to
have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.
 Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era which represented a rejection of the
Strawberry Hill, an English villa in
the "Gothic revival" style, built by
Gothic writer Horace Walpole
clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened style . In the same the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the
joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime.In other words it was a quest for a particular
frightening atmosphere.
 The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations
 Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with
mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals.
 In literature such Anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such
as Italy and Spain).
 Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses ,Gothic
architecture,castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.
 The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted
maidens, femmesfatales, monks, nuns, madwomen,magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, dragons, angels, fallen
angels, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.
THE ORIGINS OF THE GOTHIC TASTE - A NEW CONCEPTION OF BEAUTY
A new taste for the desolate, the love of ruins, graveyards, ancient castles and abbeys, was part of a revival of
interest in a past perceived as contrasting with the present reality. The rediscovery of the art, architecture,
legends and popular traditions of the Middle Ages manifested itself in the “Gothic”, which was no longer
synonymous with barbarity, but became a facet of exoticism.
1.
The idea of the
Byronic hero is one that consists of many different characteristics. The hero must
have a rather high level of intelligence and perception as well as be able to easily adapt to new situations and
use cunning to his own gain.
2.
This hero is well educated and by extension is rather sophisticated in his style.
3.
Aside from the obvious charm and attractiveness that this automatically creates, he struggles with his integrity,
being prone to mood swings or bipolar tendencies.
4.
Generally, the hero has a disrespect for any figure of authority, thus creating the image of the Byronic hero as
an exile or an outcast.
5.
The hero also has a tendency to be arrogant and cynical, indulging in self-destructive behaviour which leads to
the need to seduce women. Although his sexual attraction through being mysterious is rather helpful, this
sexual attraction often gets the hero into trouble.
The Scottish historian and philosopher David
Hume(1711-1776) denied the objectivity of experience
as stated by Locke and wrote: “Beauty is no quality in
things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which
contemplates them; and each mind perceives a
different beauty”.
The most interesting development of this idea can be found
in his “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
Ideas of Sublime and Beautiful “(1756-59).
The sublime arises neither from the pleasure produced by
beautiful forms, nor from the detached contemplation of the
object, but it has its roots in the feeling of fear and
horror created by what is infinite and terrible. For
example, void, obscurity, loneliness and silence are sublime;
the tall oaks are sublime, while flower-beds are beautiful,
the night is sublime, whereas the day is beautiful.
This “horrible beauty” identified by Burke gave
aesthetic dignity to anything ugly existing in nature,
and affected late 18th century literature. The taste
for obscurity, terror and introspection became
the distinguishing feature of the Gothic novel.
The Romantics
Further contributions to the Gothic genre were provided in the work of the Romantic poets. Prominent examples include Coleridge's The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner and Keats' La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819).
Percy Bysshe Shelley's first published work was the Gothic novel Zastrozzi (1810), about an outlaw obsessed with revenge against his father and
half-brother. Shelley published a second Gothic novel in 1811, St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, about an alchemist who seeks to impart the secret of
immortality.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or,
the Modern Prometheus
The poetry, romantic adventures and character of Lord Byron, characterised by his spurned lover Lady Caroline Lambas as “'mad, bad and
dangerous to know” were another inspiration for the Gothic, providing the archetype of the Byronic hero.
Byron was also the host of the celebrated ghost-story competition involving himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and John William Polidori at the Villa Diodati
on the banks of Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816. This occasion was productive of both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Polidori's The Vampyre (1819). Mary
Shelley's novel, though clearly influenced by the gothic tradition, is often considered the first science fiction novel, despite the omission in the novel of any scientific
explanation of the monster's animation and the focus instead on the moral issues and consequences of such a creation.A late example of traditional Gothic is Melmoth
the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin which combines themes of Anti-Catholicism with an outcast Byronic hero
Victorian Gothic
Although by the Victorian era Gothic had ceased to be the dominant genre, however it entered its most creative phase
An important and innovative reinterpreter of the Gothic in this period was Edgar Allan Poe. His story "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839)
explores these 'terrors of the soul' whilst revisiting classic Gothic themes of aristocratic decay, death, and madness . The legendary villainy of
the Spanish Inquisition, previously explored by Gothicists Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin, is revisited in "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842).
The influence of Byronic Romanticism evident in Poe is also apparent in the work of the Brontë sisters. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847)
transports the Gothic to the forbidding Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a Byronic hero in the person of the demonic
Heathcliff whilst Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) adds the madwoman in the attic to the cast of gothic fiction. The Brontës' fiction is seen by some feminist critics as
prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority and the transgressive and dangerous
attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Cathy are both examples of female protagonists in such a role.
The genre was also a heavy influence on more mainstream writers, such as Charles Dickens, who read gothic novels as a teenager and incorporated their gloomy
atmosphere and melodrama into his own works, shifting them to a more modern period and an urban setting, including Oliver Twist (1837-8), Bleak House (1854)
and Great Expectations (1860-61). These pointed to the juxtaposition of wealthy, ordered and affluent civilisation next to the disorder and barbarity of the poor within the
same metropolis. Bleak House in particular is credited with seeing the introduction of urban fog to the novel, which would become a frequent characteristic of urban
Gothic literature and film -His most explicitly Gothic work is his last novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).
The 1880s, saw the revival of the Gothic as a powerful literary form allied to "fin de siecle" decadence, which fictionalized
contemporary fears like ethical degeneration and questioned the social structures of the time. Classic works of this Urban
Gothic include Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde'sThe Picture of Dorian
Gray (1891), Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (1898)-The most famous gothic villain ever, Count Dracula was created by Bram
Stoker in his novel Dracula (1897). Stoker's book also established Transylvania and Eastern Europe as the locus classicus of the Gothic -