Gothic AO5

Question 1

Burke

Answer 1

The sublime: moves us more profoundly than the beautiful things, deeply affects us more. Dark, gloomy, threatening, vast, overwhelms us, terrifying but still delights us, power, possibly of pain- delights us, exercises neurons that could save our life- self-preservation, the power is exhilarating, powerful influence on romanticism. E.g. clifface, mountain, storm, waterfall.
Beautiful: small, smooth, delicate, attractive, pleasurable feelings. e.g. flowers, dogs.

Question 2

Chaplin

Answer 2

Through the work of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, the Gothic developed two modes of expression that continue to influence the genre to this day: terror and horror.

Question 3

Creed

Answer 3

The abject is that which is expelled or excluded, unacceptable, improper, or unclean. Symbolic order, the ruling subject must reject all that falls into such a category. All signs of bodily excretions- bile, urine, faeces, mucus, spittle, blood- must be treated as abject, cleaned up, and removed from sight.

Question 4

Gill

Answer 4

Stock characters are traditional figures whom the audience recognise and know how to respond to. Stock characters are not complex, usually they have three or four distinguishing features.

Question 5

Hendershot

Answer 5

The Gothic disrupts. It takes societal norms, and invades them.

Question 6

Kristeva

Answer 6

Abjection is linked to feelings of revulsion, disgust, nausea.
Images of waste are associated with abjection- she identifies two categories: the excremental and the menstrual.
Things that should be inside of the body, which are outside- fragility of the human frame.

Question 7

Neilson

Answer 7

While Gothic fiction seems ostensibly to uphold prevailing social structures and morals, implicit in the genre is social critique.

Question 8

Radcliffe

Answer 8

Terror is characterised by obscurity or indeterminacy in its treatment of potentially horrible events; it is this indeterminacy that leads the reader toward the sublime.
Horror nearly annihilates the reader’s responsive capacity with its unambiguous displays of atrocity.

Question 9

Botting

Answer 9

The labyrinth: associated with fear, confusion, and alienation. Site of darkness, horror, and desire. Utter separation from all social rule. They lead readers on fatal paths.

The 1790s is the decade of the Gothic.