S2: Gothic Fiction And Female Novelists Flashcards
Who is another poet from the romantic Epoche? (1795-1821)
John Keats
Whats a term introduced by John Keats?
Negative capability
What is negative capability?
Absence of capability: he is interested in what actually drives men and human beings, beautiful things, absence of something is not necessarily bad or negative
What are 3 major works of John Keats?
- Ode on a Grecian urn (1819)
- La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819)
- On Autumn (1820)
What are 2 characteristics of John Keats?
- humble background
- studies medicine
Whats the form of „ode on a Grecian urn“?
5 stanzas, quartet (abaab + sestet, iambic pentameter)
What is Ekphrasis?
Rhetorisches Mittel: sehr detaillierte Beschreibung
What are the themes of „ode on a Grecian urn“?
- past, time, eternity
- art
- desire, fulfilment
What does the urn in „ode on a Grecian urn“ symbolise?
Liberating past, time, eternity, what remains
It is something that has survived endlessly, timeless beauty (reflection of timelessness)
Famous poem (quoted a lot)
What is another poet left from romantic period? (1788-1824)
George Gordon Byron
What are 3 major works of George Gordon Byron?
- Don Juan (epic satire, 1819/1824)
- Manfred (closet drama, 1819)
- Prometheus (1818)
Who is George Gordon Byron‘s daughter?
Ada Lovelace
Who was George Gordon Byron‘s close friend?
Shelley
How was George Gordon Byron‘s lifestyle?
Scandalous
How did George Gordon Byron die?
- war of Greek independence (1821-1832)
- financial support for the cause
- died of violent fever in Missolongi
- „Byron“ still a popular name in Greece
- town of Vyronas named after him
Who was Caroline Lamb?
Byron‘s lover
With what epoque has the gothic one many overlaps?
Romanticism (Schauerromantik)
What kind of movement was the gothic literature? (Continent)
European
German: Schauerroman
France: roman noir
What kind of authors are present in the gothic?
Female authors
What are characteristics of gothic novels? (6)
- barbaric, medieval, frightening, dark
- picturesque scenery
- often set in continental Europe rather than England
- images of ruin and decay (literally and metaphorically)
- melodrama and excess
- damsel in distress, fallen hero
What are motifs of gothic epoque? (6)
- cruelty
- Hauntings
- imprisonment
- madness
- sexual transgressions
- damsel in distress/fallen hero
What are we not talking about when talking about the gothic?
Germanic tribes, medieval architecture, youth culture
What are 3 famous gothic novels?
- Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
- Matthew Lewis: The Monk (1796)
- Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
What are 3 major works by Ann Radcliffe?
- A Sicilian Romance (1790)
- The Romance of the Forest (1791)
- The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
What are features of Ann Radcliffes novels? (6)
- innocent (often orphaned) heroines
- sentimental tradition = excess of feelings
- imagined horrors combined with more „realistic“ mysteries
- suspense
- rational explanation at the end = „supernatural explained“
- clear moral at the end, restitution of domesticity
Whats terror?
- finest emotion (Stephen King)
- awful apprehension/the smell of death (Devendra Varma, The Gothic Flame)
Whats horror?
- sickening realisation, stumbling against a corpse (Devendra Varma, The Gothic Flame)
What was Matthew Lewis‘ profession?
writer and politician (diplomat, MP)
What are 3 of Matthew Lewis major works?
- The Monk (1796)
- The Castle Spectre (1796)
- The Minister: A Tragedy, in Five Acts (1797)
Whats the Main Plot of „The Monk“?
- Perfect and famous monk Ambrosio falls in love/lust with virtuous Antonia (who is love with Lorenzo, a young nobleman)
- Beautiful Matilda cross-dresses as young monk in order to seduce Ambrosio and suceeds
- Matilda proposes a pact with the devil to gain access to Antonia and Ambrosio agrees
- Ambrosio kills Antonia’s mother, Elvira, who tries to prevent Ambrosio molesting her daughter
- Ambrosio drugs Antonia and takes her ‘corpse’ to the monastery
- Ambrosio rapes Antonia in the monastery’s crypt and kills her
- Matilda and Ambrosio are imprisoned by the Inquisition
- Matilda convinces Ambrosio to sell his soul to the devil in order to
escape prison - Satan appears and reveals that Ambrosio is Elvira’s son and has thus killed his mother and raped and killed his sister
- Matilda turns out to be a demon
- Satan tells Ambrosio that he should have asked for eternal life and not just for release from prison
- Ambroise dies a horrific death
Whats the subplot of the Monk?
Subplot:
• Pregnant nun Agnes is tortured by the Prioress and imprisoned in the convent’s crypt; the baby is born there and dies shortly afterwards
• Raymond, Agnes’ lover and Lorenzo’s friend, travels through Europe and encounters bandits, the Wandering Jew and the Bleeding Nun
Who were Mary Shelley‘s parents?
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
What are 3 of Mary Shelley‘s major works?
- Frankenstein (1818)
- Mathilda (1819)
- The Last Man (1826)
Who was Mary Wollstonecraft?
- rejection of aristocracy, arguing for democracy
- arguing for education for women
- comparing marriage to „legal prostitution“
- criticising „innocence“ as a virtue
Who was William Godwin?
- „government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind“
- progress is possible and can be brought by rationality rather than laws
Whats the setting of Frankenstein?
Alps, arctic, uncanny study
What are themes of Frankenstein?
Monster, fallen hero, sublime
Science in Frankenstein?
- Vitalism: difference between living and inanimate entities
- Abernathy/Lawrence debate: body and soul vs. Body as a purely mechanic system
What are motifs in Frankenstein?
- Faust: ambition
- (failing) creator = Hybris
- (failed) Prometheus = lack of responsibility
- humanity
Whats Frankenstein‘s narrative?
- framed narrative: Captain Walton, Frankenstein, creature
- first person narrators, homodiegetic
Who were Charlotte Bronte‘s sisters?
Emily (Wuthering Heights) and Anne (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall)
What was Charlotte Bronte‘s pen name?
Currer Bell
What did Charlotte Brontë work as?
Governess
What are Charlotte Bronte‘s major works?
- Jane Eyre (1847)
- Shirley (1849)
- Villette (1853)
- The Professor (1857)
What are the genres of „Jane Eyre“?
Naturalism/Gothic (melodrama)
Whats Jane Eyres narrative?
- first person, homodiegetic
- „autobiography“
- female voice
What are Naturalism characteristics in Jane Eyre?
- Education = Bildungsroman
- social class
- gender
What are Gothic characteristics in Jane Eyre?
- settings
- „otherness“
What are the settings in Jane Eyre?
- Gateshead House
- Lowood School
- Thornfield Hall
- Moor House
- Ferndean Manor
How are Jane‘s emotions indicated?
Subjective perspective, narration
What do the different settings indicate?
They are indicators of Jane‘s development and social position
Femininity: Jane?
= not a typical heroine (refers to herself as being plain, link to character)
- plain
- virtuous
- strong principles
- not conforming to gender roles
Femininity: Blanche Ingram?
- beautiful
- vain
- flirtatious
Femininity: Bertha Mason (first Mrs Rochester)?
- mad
- sexual
- exotic
What are novels, which mention Bertha Mason‘s Afterlife?
- Jean Rhys „Wide Sargasso Sea“ (1966): prequel to Jane Eyre; postcolonial classic
- Sandra Gilbert/Susan Gubar „The Mad-woman in the attic: The woman writer and the 19th-century literary imagination“ (1979): categorisation of female characters as either „angel“ or „monster“; madwoman in the attic as symbol for repressed female agency/creativity/ sexuality
Realism is a reaction against…
Romanticism/Gothic
What is the primary genre of realism?
Novel - roots in the 18th century
Realism is…
A) international (… name 3)
B) representation of ….
C) avoidance of …
A) Dostojewsky, Pushkin, Twain
B) ordinary things as they are
C) implausible, exotic or supernatural elements
What are features of realism?
- verisimilitude (Wahrheitsnähe)
- „simple“ language
- Omniscient narrator
- middle-class characters
- interest in individuals‘s emotions, character, etc.
- social issues (class, gender, etc)
What are Jane Austen‘s major works?
- Sense and Sensibility (1811)
- Pride and Prejudice (1813)
- Mansfield Park (1814)
- Emma (1815)
- Northanger Abbey (1818)
- Persuasion (1818)
What are themes in Jane Austen‘s novels?
Domesticity, society, marriage, money, irony/satire, conversation
What are stylistic devices in Jane Austen‘s novels?
- irony
- conversation
- free indirect discourse
Whats free indirect discourse (narrated monologue)?
- Representation of a character’s consciousness in third-person narration
• Mixture of psychonarration and interior monologue
• Less formal in syntax, exclamations, ellipses, mimicking of character’s way of speaking, etc
• Avoidance of “he/she said”, etc
• Impression of immediacy
• “Dualvoice”àthird-personnarratorand character merge
Explain the concept of „the uncanny“ within the framework of Gothic literature.
The uncanny refers to a feeling of unease or discomfort generated in the reader when something familiar is made strange or unsettling.
Within the framework of Gothic literature, the uncanny usually results in a feeling of mystery, discomfort, horror or strangeness in a novel.
How is Jane Austen‘s Pride and Prejudice a typical realist novel?
- omniscient narrator
- focus on the domestic world, marriage, society, money
- focus on middle class characters
- use of everyday or simple language
Otherness
Otherness is the result of a discursive process by which a dominant in-group (“Us,” the Self) constructs one or many dominated out-groups (“Them,” Other) by stigmatizing a difference – real or imagined – presented as a negation of identity and thus a motive for potential discrimination.
Gothic
- European setting
- first person narration
