The Shadow of Reason: Gothic, Horror, and the
Mad Scientist
Science Fiction & Horror: blurred boundaries?
Horror
Folklore & Religious traditions
ex. Folktales, myths, & legends
ex. Demonology & visions of “hell”
Morality or Cautionary Tales: warnings against violating
laws/boundaries (cultural, spiritual)
Purpose of horror: or, but why horror? Why?
Gothic Horror – etymology
“Goth”: ancient Germanic tribe
“barbarous”
“Flavius Stilicho Confronts Goths” (1901):
http://medias.photodeck.com/6280416e-3a47-11e0-bcb3b13c3320b90e/001054_xgaplus.jpg
“Goth”:
Type of medieval architecture
(Germanic aka non-classical)
“irregular” motifs in architecture of this style…
Pointed arch (Lincoln Cathedral):
http://lookuparchitecture.com/historygothic/lincolnchoir500.jpg
Ribbed vault (Notre-Dames de Reims):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Reims_Cat
hedral,_interior_(4).jpg
Flying buttress (Sainte-Chapelle de Riom):
https://deirdremorgan1.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/flyingbuttresses.jpg
Notre-Dame de Reims:
http://www.paradoxplace.com/Photo%20Pages/France/Burgundy%
20Champagne/Reims/Reims_Cathedral_West/Images/ReimsWFront-Sept07-DE4330sAR.jpg
Notre-Dame de Reims, rose window:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Reims_Cat
hedrale_Notre_Dame_interior_002.JPG
Notre-Dame de Reims, flying buttresses:
http://www.unitedeuropeanchristendom.com/UEC_photos_to_web
site/uec_fr_reims_notre_dame_cathedral_chevet.jpg
Gothic architecture
Thinner walls
=
=
larger buildings
natural light
Commune with God?
Reach the heavens?
Transcendent? Sublime?
Early Gothic Horror
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1767) - - “A Gothic
Story” (2nd ed)
“An attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the
modern. In the former all was imagination and improbability: in
the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been,
copied with success.” (Walpole 2nd Preface)
Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1797)
Branches of Gothic:
Terror (suspense)
Horror (grotesque)
Characteristics of Gothic Horror
1. Settings evoking Gothic settings (castles, churches)
2. Fear and terror imbued in the physical landscape: images of
death and decay
3. Hauntings by the past (including supernatural)
4. Fear of the “dark” ages returning to oppress the more
“enlightened” modern era
5. Heightened emotion: melodramatic
Frankenstein as Gothic Horror
Conception: Fantasmagoriana (1812)– ghost stories
June 1816 (Lake Geneva):
Lord Byron (age 30)
John Polidori (age 22: Byron’s doctor - - “The Vampyre”, 1819)
Claire Clairmont (age 18: stepsister to Mary, lover to Byron)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 23)
Mary Shelley (age 18 - - Frankenstein, 1818)
Villa Diodati:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Villa_dioda
ti_2008.07.27_rg_5.JPG
Lake Geneva:
http://chirkup.me/images/uploaded/00/00/72/7221_original.jpg
Frankenstein as Gothic Horror
Form: epistolary novel (to accentuate horror)
(another famous Gothic horror example: Bram Stoker’s
Dracula, 1897)
Gothic Horror of settings & events: abandoned & desolate
locales
Horror (fear and terror) in the natural landscape:
external turmoil reflecting
internal (psychological) struggle
Haunting of the past on the present
(Victor & the Creature)
Site of Horror:
The Present, Internal (Horror in & of the self), Isolation
“I busied myself to think of a story, - a story to rival those which
had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the
mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror – one
to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and
quicken the beatings of the heart” (Shelley 7-8). [emphasis added]
“mysterious fears of our nature”:
#1. Frankenstein Syndrome: fear that science will destroy us
#2. Isolation & Alienation: leading to misery and (self) destruction
Genre “shadows” in Frankenstein
Science Fiction
Q: What does it mean to be human?
Horror
the Monster (Monstrosity)
Frankenstein Syndrome
“return of the repressed”
“Return of the repressed”:
Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Psyche:
Id (pleasurable desire: unconscious “pleasure principle”)
Ego (mediates “id” & “real world”: conscious “reality principle”)
Superego (conscience/ ideal)
Repression:
society urges us to repress instinctual desire (“id”)
BUT
repression never complete
&
the repressed inevitably returns
(basic premise of most horror story/film)
Pre-Romantics: effects on Gothic Horror in Frankenstein
The Sublime
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) – fear AND attraction
Ideas of the Child & Development
John Locke (1632-1704) “tabula rasa”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
“natural” education & corruption of society
Nature as “terrific”
Primacy of sensory experience
Children as innocent & society as corrupting: Monstrous children?
Monstrous parents?
The Double (Doppelgänger)
Walton – Victor – Creature
Psychoanalysis:
Double as symbol of repressed (double as return of the
“repressed”)
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961): archetype - “the shadow”
Victor first sees the Creature
(Victor sees shadow/mirror of himself?)
Volume 1, Chapter 5 (Pages 58-59)
“I had desired it … rushed downstairs”
Frankenstein’s structure as double:
Walton – Victor – Creature – Victor – Walton
Q (for tutorial):
What does the double reveal about the self?
Mad Scientist
Victor Frankenstein as prototypical “mad scientist”:
madness in individual or science?
Mad scientist used for satire or horror
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valedmar” (1845)
Reflecting on contemporary scientific experimentation &
discovery
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Satire
Similarities with Science Fiction:
Literature of Ideas
Portray other worlds but real focus on own society
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valedmar”
(1845)
Mesmerism
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734 – 1815)
“Animal Magnetism”
Trance
Suggestion
Commune with dead?
Frankenstein (1910):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcLxsOJK9bs