Early Gothic Flashcards
1
Q
Sorrows of Young Werther
A
- Banned 1774 due to suicide.
-
2
Q
Macpherson’s Ossian
A
- Epic poem
- James Macpherson had supposedly found
- paved the way for Frankenstein and Dracula’s style of epistolary novel
3
Q
Key tropes:
A
Aristocratic characters
Narrative stories sold to middle-class, female audiences
Varied locations e.g. Arabia
Antiquated past—passage of time through architecture, documents (epistolary: the Mysterious Document)
Melodrama
Popularity of sentimentalism
Villains doing monstrous things but not necessarily being monsters
4
Q
John Langhorne, an English clergyman and poet in 1735-1779 reaction to Castle of Otranto
A
called the novel ‘false’ and ‘preposterous’ and condemned Walpole for ‘re-establishing the barbarous superstitions of Gothic devilism’