Context and Related Tropes Flashcards
What is Gothic Term “Ancestral Curse” and where is it seen?
Evil or misfortune that comes as a response to or retribution for deeds committed by ones ancestors. Figures largely in the “fish” gothic romance, Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.
Example: Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables Colonel and his descendants are cursed for stealing from Matthew Maule.
AO3 Surrounding Anti- Catholicism?
The Inquisition frequently appeared in early gothic texts, symbolic of horrid repression, corruption and persecution that surrounded Catholics.
What is bodysnatching and AO3 example?
Stealing corpses from graves, tombs or morgues.
Frankenstein: Victor’s monster comes from some kind of assemblage
What is a catacomb?
an underground cemetery consisting of a subterranean gallery with recesses for tombs, as constructed by the ancient Romans.
They are typical Gothic spaces because they enable living to enter below ground a dark labyrinth resonating with presences and mysteries of the dead. Often where revenance can occur
Dreaming/Nightmares AO3
Dreams dredge up deep emotions that reflect the dreamer, what one might conceal during waking hours. This heightened emotional state is why they are used often within gothic literature. Dreams reveal to the reader what the character is often too afraid to realise about himself or herself.
EXAMPLE:
Shelley’s Frankenstein. Following two years of difficult work, Victor
Frankenstein re-animates a once dead corpse. However, the elation he
expected to feel at this conquest does not occur because he is horrified
at the monster’s loathsome appearance. Exhausted and saddened by
his prolonged work and dashed expectations, he falls into a dream
state that begins with his kissing of Elizabeth, his love. However, this
kiss changes her in the most drastic way as she transforms into the
rotting corpse of Caroline, Victor’s dead mother. Upon awakening
from this horrifying dream, Victor finds himself staring into the face of
the monster he has created.
Entrapment and Imprisonment
Favourite horror device of gothic finds a person confined or trapped. Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” Madeleine Usher is buried alive in a coffin (the ultimate entrapment) to cure a strange malady. Reader experiences the full gothic horror of her awakening within her own tomb
Grotesque
A mutation of the character, plants and/or animals. Transforms normal features/ behaviours into extremes that are frightening or disturbingly comic.
The Haunted Castle or House
Examples: Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. Walpole’s novel
first introduced to gothic literature its single most influential
convention, the haunted castle. The castle is the main setting of the
story and the center of activity. It is an old, dark, decaying castle
plagued by an finds herself haunted by that “horrid paper.”
Terror vs Horror
Works of terror create a sense of uncertain apprehension
that leads to a complex fear of obscure and dreadful
elements –> essence of terror
stimulates the imagination and often challenges
intellectual reasoning to arrive at a somewhat plausible
explanation of this ambiguous fear and
anxiety.
f horror are constructed from a maze of
alarmingly concrete imagery designed to induce fear,
shock, revulsion, and disgust. Horror appeals to lower
EXAMPLE:
Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis’
The Monk, respectively, perfectly illustrate this divide between terror
and horror and helped establish the distinction throughout the 19th
and 20th centuries. The former causes the reader to imagine and
cross-examine those imaginings; the latter causes shock and disgust; the
former aspires to the realm of high literature; the latter wallows in the
low.
Mist
Convention often used in Gothic Literature to obscure objects, even in modern Gothic like “The Mist” written by Stephen Kin where terrifying creatures reside within Mist
The Pursued Protagonist
Idea of a pursuing force that relentlessly acts upon a character. Coleridge’s Mariner
The Pursuit of the Heroine
Pursuit of a virtuous and idealistic young woman by a villain, usually a wicked, older but still potent aristocrat. Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho
Revenant
Return of the dead to terrorize or to settle some score with the living
Sadism
Coined by the Marquis de Sade, sadism is a sexual perversion where one person gains gratification by inflicting physical or mental pain on others.
Somnambulism
Better known as sleep walking, one may engage in array of motor activities.
