Gothic terminology Flashcards
Convention
A feature of a work that defines its genre
Trope
The use of figurative language or a literary device for a favoured effect
Setting
The location and time frame in which the action of the narrative takes pplace
Genre
A distinctive type or category of literary composition
Style
How a work is presented through the writer’s voice
Liminality
Someone or something being on the boundary between two things, often two extremes
Blurred boundaries
Where a boundary becomes more broad so there is more ambiguity
Identity
The things that make a character or object distinctive to dictate their actions
Intertextuality
The shaping of a text’s meaning by another text to lead to a richer reading experience which invitess new interpretations
Character representation
How the narrator describes a character to filter the reader’s understanding of the character
Gender representation
How the writer and the characters define themselves and how society evaluates them
Class distinction
A characteristic that is observed to differ based on social class
Class distinction
A characteristic that is observed to differ based on social class
Heirarchy
A system in which people are ranked according to relative status or authority
Feminist literature
Literature that deliberately transgresses traditional boundaries, in order to understand how gender has been constructed and represented through language
Marxist literature
Reading the text as an expression of contemporary class struggles relating to social and political conditions at the time
Female Gothic
The use of certain coded expressions to describe anxieties over domestic entrapment and female sexuality by female Gothic writers
Fin de siècle Gothic
Gothic literature of the last three decades if the 19th Century where there is a pervading sense of unease and instability
18th Century Gothic
Gothic fiction published in the 18th Century which evoked the sentimental and supernatural qualities of medieval romance
Terror vs horror
Terror feels dread or apprehension at the possibility of something; horror is the shock and repulsion of seeing something
The sublime
The worshipping of aesthetic and intellectual greatness that excites the reader beyond one’s normal experience
The Uncanny
The psychological experience of a familiar thing or event being encountered in an unsettling, eerie or taboo context
Doppelganger
The literal or symbolic double set in opposition to one of the chaaracters which allows for an explanatation of human duality
the Gothic
Works that depict strange and mysterious events using tropes
Agency
The ability or choice to take action
Dichotomy
A difference between completely opposite concepts or objects
Duality
The state of combining two things at once
the Other
Something or someone cast into the state of being different or seperate
Trauma
Severe or emotional lasting shock and pain which a psychological impact
Objectification
The process of treatingg a person like a thing without feelings, opinions or rights
the Abject
Something that disturbs the self, by provoking disgust, fear, loathing or repulsion
Orientalism
Western constructions of ‘the Orient’ as exotic, seductive and violent
Incarceration
The state of being confined and imprisoned
