GOTHIC LITERATURE: INTRODUCTION
The origins of Gothic literature can be traced to various
historical, cultural, and artistic precedents. Figures found in
ancient folklore, such as the Demon Lover, the Cannibal
Bridegroom, the Devil, and assorted demons, later populated
the pages of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic
novels and dramas. In addition, many seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century works are believed to have served as
precursors to the development of the Gothic tradition in Romantic
literature. These works include plays by William Shakespeare, such as Hamlet (c. 1600–01), and Macbeth (1606),
which feature supernatural elements, demons, and apparitions, and Daniel Defoe's An Essay on the History and
Reality of Apparitions (1727), which was written to support religion and discourage superstition by providing
evidence of the existence of good spirits, angels, and other divine manifestations, and by ridiculing delusions and
naive credulity. However, while these elements were present in literature and folklore prior to the mid-eighteenth
when the Gothic movement began, it was the political,
social, and theological landscape of eighteenth-century Europe
that served as an impetus for this movement. Edmund Burke's
treatise A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of
the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) introduced the concept of
increasing appreciation for the nature of experiences
characterized by the "sublime" and "beautiful" by depicting
and then engaging (vicariously) in experiences comprised of
elements that are contrary in nature, such as terror, death,
and evil. Writers composed Gothic narratives during this period
largely in response to anxiety over the change in social and
political structure brought about by such events as the French
Revolution, the rise in secular-based government, and the
rapidly changing nature of the everyday world brought about by
scientific advances and industrial development, in addition to an
increasing aesthetic demand for realism rather than folklore and
fantasy. The Gothic worlds depicted fears about what might
happen, what could go wrong, and what could be lost by
century,
continuing along the path of political, social, and theological
change, as well as reflecting the desire to return to the time of
fantasy and belief in supernatural intervention that characterized
the Middle Ages. In some cases Gothic narratives were also
used to depict horrors that existed in the old social and political
order—the evils of an unequal, intolerant society. In Gothic
narratives writers were able to both express the anxiety
generated by this upheaval and, as Burke suggested,
increase society's appreciation and desire for change and
progress.
It is Horace Walpole's novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) that
is generally acclaimed as the original work of Gothic
literature—despite the fact that some of the Gothic trappings
found in Walpole's work were present in works such as Tobias
Smollett's The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753)—
because in his narrative Walpole brings together elements of the
supernatural and horrific, and models his ruined castle setting
after his real-life residence, Strawberry Hill, a modern version of
a medieval castle. The characters in the novel try to succeed in
the modern world and to adhere to the optimism and forwardlooking agenda they have been asked to advance, but a dark,
ancient evil from the distant past dooms them to failure. While
the literary merits of Walpole's novel were challenged by many
critics, the work inspired the reading public and authors alike,
and works imitative of Otranto, written in what became known
as the Gothic style, became extremely popular. Brother and
sister John Aikin and Anna Laetitia (Aikin) Barbauld, in their
Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (1773), represent the intellectual
and psychological mechanics of Gothic literature, and offer "Sir
Bertrand, A Fragment," a story written in Gothic style, to
illustrate their assertions. Ann Radcliffe, like Walpole, is
considered one of the founders of the Gothic genre. Radcliffe
began her career as a Gothic writer with the publication of her
well-received novel The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne in
1789, and quickly followed up with the novels A Sicilian
Romance and The Romance of the Forest published in 1790 and
1791, respectively. Radcliffe's 1794 novel, The Mysteries of
Udolpho is regarded by many as the quintessential example of
eighteenth-century fiction at its finest, and it is for this work that
she is best known. Mrs. Eliza Parsons's Castle of Wolfenbach
(1793) is an example of the melodramatic popular "shilling
shocker," or "penny dreadful" type of Gothic fiction, a debased
imitation of Radcliffe's style, characterized by gross excess and
lack of literary skill, that was parodied by Jane Austen in
Northanger Abbey (1818). Parsons was one of many novelists,
including Edward Bulwer-Lytton—held as an author of a more
"elevated," or skilled example of the popular Gothic
melodrama—who produced works of this kind. Other works
considered classic examples of the Gothic novel are Matthew
Gregory Lewis's The Monk (1796), and Charles Robert
Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), both of which
epitomize the stock Gothic character of the outsider, or social
outcast, who must face the consequences of committing mortal
sin.
The great Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron,
John Keats, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge also contributed
to the Gothic tradition in literature, and, according to critic
Fred Botting, produced "major innovations, or renovations of
the genre" that "drew it closer to aspects of Romanticism." The
Romantic writers, asserts Botting as well as other commentators,
while utilizing the settings and devices developed by Walpole,
Radcliffe, and others, focused and expanded upon the
psychological, internal qualities of the protagonists, and dealt
with such themes as the search for identity, desire versus duty,
social alienation, and the search for truth. William Godwin, and
his daughter, Mary Shelley, are the Romantic writers most
closely associated with the Gothic tradition. Godwin's Things as
They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) utilizes
the Gothic tradition to indict political repression and protest the
tyrannical rule of the day, while Shelley's Gothic in
Frankenstein (1818) urges personal integrity and social
responsibility in an age of scientific progress, and represents the
anxiety produced by the disruption of the traditional, known
natural world order.
While English writers are credited with founding the Gothic
novel, Scottish writers such as James Hogg contributed heavily
to the genre, and many English-language works were influenced
by German literary traditions, particularly the works of such
writers as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and E. T. A. Hoffmann.
Sir Walter Scott's works reflect a German sensibility, and works
such as his Waverly (1814)—as well as the works of others,
including Walpole, Radcliffe, Shelley, Maturin, and Lewis—in
turn inspired Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe,
and James Fenimore Cooper, some of the most notable
authors who developed what became the American Gothic
tradition in literature. In addition, the English Gothic tradition
influenced French authors, including Gaston Leroux, and
Russian authors, including Fyodor Dostoevsky and Anton
Chekhov. Since its inception, the Gothic genre in literature
has undergone numerous changes and adaptations, but its
essential role as a means of depicting humanity's deepest,
darkest fears and otherwise unspeakable evils—both real
and imagined—has endured.
Gothic > Intro
There are two distinct Gothic styles in the eighteenth century.
The first, what we might call “early eighteenth-century Gothic,”
is a revival of medieval styles, especially in architecture, as a
form of cultural nationalism. Manor houses were built in the
style of the Tudor castles of the Middle Ages because this were
thought to be an indigenous “English”style that symbolized the
English values of tradition, security, and strength at a time of
great political and economic rivalry with France. In the later
eighteenth century, the Gothic style came to be associated
with another aspect of medievalism: the mysterious and
spooky world of the Catholic church at the time of the
Inquisition, for example, and the bright jewel-like colors, flat
perspective, and sometimes gory piety of fifteenth-century
church painting. So we might see early eighteenth-century
Gothic manor houses using the classic pointed arch of the
Gothic style, but the same pointed arch in a late-century building
like Walpole’s Strawberry Hill is used in an exaggerated, almost
campy way to symbolize style for its own sake, even decadence.
The later Gothic style also expanded to include Gothic literature,
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