Gothic literary timeline Flashcards
When was Mysteries of Udolpho written and by who?
Ann Radcliffe 1794
When was the Monk written and by who?
Matthew Lewis 1796
When was Frankenstein written and by who?
Mary Shelley 1818
When was Northanger Abbey written and by who?
Jane Austen 1818
When was Darwin’s Origin of Species published?
1859
When was Jekyll and Hyde written?
1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson
When was the New Women Movement?
1894
When was Oscar Wilde’s sodomy trial?
1895
What religious symbol does Bruno Star believe Dracula is?
He believes Dracula is a figurative anti-christ
What does Roger Luckhurst believe about Wilde leaving out the sordid details?
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
What does a critic believe about the setting of London in Dorian Gray?
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
What does a critic believe about Lord Henry and Basil?
Lord Henry Wotton represents instinct and Basil Hallward represents conscience
What does Joyce Carol Oates believe about Basil’s murder?
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
What does Dino Felluga believe about aestheticism
The novel is an illustration of the disastrous effect of art on life and of confusing ethics with aesthetics
Setting
- 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
The Sublime (incomprehensible forces/the unknown)
- spectral or grotesque figures
- irregular, chaotic forces
- vast mountainous areas
- the idea of the object is the sublime, a mood or approaching
Characters
- 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
Terror vs horror
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.
Plot
- a plot which features the supernatural or sinister - macabre or uncanny
- unresolved personal traumas
Multiple narrators
- 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
Ideas and themes
- 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
The domestic setting
- generates a sense of the uncanny
- mixing domestic with the extraordinary
- invasion of domestic setting
The outsider
- the struggle of ideals between good and evil - blurred moral boundaries
- transgresses against the safe world of conventional authority
Gothic melodrama
- plots often sensationalised - comical cliches and does not arouse horror/terror in the reader
What was the gothic a reaction to?
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’
What do gothic texts allow readers to do?
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
