Gothic literary timeline

Question 1

When was Mysteries of Udolpho written and by who?

Answer 1

Ann Radcliffe 1794

Question 2

When was the Monk written and by who?

Answer 2

Matthew Lewis 1796

Question 3

When was Frankenstein written and by who?

Answer 3

Mary Shelley 1818

Question 4

When was Northanger Abbey written and by who?

Answer 4

Jane Austen 1818

Question 5

When was Darwin’s Origin of Species published?

Answer 5

1859

Question 6

When was Jekyll and Hyde written?

Answer 6

1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Question 7

When was the New Women Movement?

Answer 7

1894

Question 8

When was Oscar Wilde’s sodomy trial?

Answer 8

1895

Question 9

What religious symbol does Bruno Star believe Dracula is?

Answer 9

He believes Dracula is a figurative anti-christ

Question 10

What does Roger Luckhurst believe about Wilde leaving out the sordid details?

Answer 10

He believes that ‘there is actually no explicit statement of what Dorian’s vices really are: it is left to the lurid imagination of the reader to detail them

Question 11

What does a critic believe about the setting of London in Dorian Gray?

Answer 11

In the novel, London becomes a reflection of Dorian’s own divided nature. He embodies the best and worst of the society in which he lives

Question 12

What does a critic believe about Lord Henry and Basil?

Answer 12

Lord Henry Wotton represents instinct and Basil Hallward represents conscience

Question 13

What does Joyce Carol Oates believe about Basil’s murder?

Answer 13

The murder of Basil by Dorian is usually seen as one of the most demonic of Dorian’s acts. Yet the murder is symbolically appropriate

Question 14

What does Dino Felluga believe about aestheticism

Answer 14

The novel is an illustration of the disastrous effect of art on life and of confusing ethics with aesthetics

Question 15

Setting

Answer 15

• use dark gloomy and uncertain landscapes or architecture to create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery
• usually include buildings such as castles, graveyards, caves, dungeons and churches/chapels
• reflects the characters psychological states
• isolated and desolate
• powerful effect on the story and can be a character itself
• ominous natural elements

Question 16

The Sublime (incomprehensible forces/the unknown)

Answer 16

• spectral or grotesque figures
• irregular, chaotic forces
• vast mountainous areas
• the idea of the object is the sublime, a mood or approaching

Question 17

Characters

Answer 17

• protagonists are isolated and alone (physical or emotional)
• women are often curious and have tendencies to swoon
• often a hero and a villain (good and evil)
• fallen hero
• virginal maiden
• imprisoned female, subjective temptress

Question 18

Terror vs horror

Answer 18

Terror:

• concerned with the psychological experience of being full of fear and dread
• recognises human limits

Horror:

• focuses on the horrific object or event
• damaging or limiting consequences for the readers state of mind

Ann Radcliffe distinction between terror and horror. Terror can be morally uplifting and does not show horrific things explicitly but only suggests them. Whereas horror ‘freezes’ and nearly annihilates the senses as it shows atrocious things explicitly.

Question 19

Plot

Answer 19

• a plot which features the supernatural or sinister - macabre or uncanny
• unresolved personal traumas

Question 20

Multiple narrators

Answer 20

• labyrinth plots generate mysterious and tantalising glimpses of unknown forces
• dreams and visions act as plot devices, reveal what lies beneath the rational world
• reflective of psychological state

Question 21

Ideas and themes

Answer 21

• repressed fears and desires
• death and decay
• extreme unchartered psychological states of mind
• discovery of the irrational by base instincts
• looks back at the past

Question 22

The domestic setting

Answer 22

• generates a sense of the uncanny
• mixing domestic with the extraordinary
• invasion of domestic setting

Question 23

The outsider

Answer 23

• the struggle of ideals between good and evil - blurred moral boundaries
• transgresses against the safe world of conventional authority

Question 24

Gothic melodrama

Answer 24

• plots often sensationalised - comical cliches and does not arouse horror/terror in the reader

Question 25

What was the gothic a reaction to?

Answer 25

The enlightenment - looked forward at science, progression etc. The gothic looked back at the past.

A reaction against the rational discourse that marked the literature and philosophy of ‘The Age of Reason’

Question 26

What do gothic texts allow readers to do?

Answer 26

think the unthinkable and sublimate their innermost desires with the pages of the book

The gothic allows ideas that would otherwise not be acceptable to be explored