Study Questions about Gothic Literature Flashcards
Define Freud’s Concept of Das Unheimliche (The Uncanny)
The Uncanny designates both an aesthetic pattern and neurotic patterns in those suffering from compulsive disorders. Critically, the uncanny is the repeat manifestation of pre/unconscious, repressed facets of psychological. Especially, mental content relating to sex and/or death. In other words, the uncanny is the manifested appearance of latent mental/sociopsychological content which has circumvented the defence mechanisms of the reality-repression principle. As such, the uncanny is a symbolic hint for something unspoken. It can take many forms, but Freud identified some in particular:
- Psychological splitting/disassociation, especially as studied by Otto rank (doppelgänger)
- Inverted projection (the Evil Eye)
- Receptivity to the unconsciousness (hypnosis, psychedelics, the 19th and late 18th c. practice of mesmirism, which is essentially).
- The Uncanncy can also be presented through the aesthetic process of fashioning and/or remembering dreams (albeit this is a weakness in Freud’s concept)
Why did the Gothic emerge during the Enlightenment era?
The essential movement of the Enlightenment era was the belief that society and knowledge could be recognised, organised and systematised under the rubric of reason and scientific enquiry. The gothic symbolises the anxieties underlying this movement: the existence of an inner reality which abhors and resists the microscope of reason and conventions of Judeo-Christian morality.
Simultaneous with the institutionalisation of scientific reasoning as the primary epistemic model by which society’s would hierarchise knowledge, the Enlightenment also saw the ascent of the middle-class during the middle-class. As such, the Gothic is also doubly a response to trauma of regime changes at the turn of the 18th into 19th century (the end of feudal nobilesse oblige) as well as a response to the morally puritanical shame inculcated by the middle-class with their strong exhortation towards self-abnegation.
What is the sublime?
A good answer must include:
1: the definition. The sublime is a psychological aesthetic experience which cannot be assimilated or constrain by aesthetic appreciation. A positive variant of the sublime is the experience of beatific revelation
2: Edmund Burke defined a variant of the sublime known as “sublime terror”. This conceptualisation of the sublime, premised on his observations of imperial oppression in Ireland, denotes a experience of sublimity which is overwhelming and/or contaminant (in the literal sense that terror and outrage spread from person to person).
3: The sublime can be evoked by nature or the inventions of human ingenuity: the sublime object can be fog over rollicking oceans as well as the silhouette of the vampire in crepuscular gloom.
4: Reference Peter de Bolla and Andrew Smith’s: there is a confusion in the discourse between objects which are sublime and objects “of” the sublime. This explains the divergence in natural vs synthetic sources of the sublime as well as how the sublime also provided a theory of emotional, aesthetic reception and a precursor for aspects of psychodynamic psychology such as Freud’s concept of the Uncanny.
5: An example of the Sublime from Poe or Dracula.
What is the discursive assumption underlying gothic literature regarding human ontology?
Whereas many enlightenment figures asserted the unity of human psychology, gothic literature contains the (much more accurate) assumption that human consciousness is essentially a fragmented psychology.
How did Darwin’s theory of evolution of challenge the 19th century bourgeoisie’s identity, and how is it relevant to Gothic literature?
Because it implies a repressed, anti-social animality at the heart of human nature. This fear is present in the image of the vampire who is both animal and human.
For others, it also represented the failure of science to elevate human nature. This fear is also present in Dracula, as van Helsing, heralded as a scientific polymath and demonstrated to be so through his knowledge of blood transfusion, and others must use non-scientific means to destroy Dracula (a stake through the heart).
Analyse this passage from Dracula?
“I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips.”
“I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.”
A good answer should include some following contextual points:
1: The Late Victorian fear of the New Woman and early feminism - female sexual agency as anti-conservative
2: Women as predators - Darwin
3: Incest taboo: their physiognomic description is reminiscent of Dracula.
4: Sexual ambivalence which is incompatible with the strictures of Victorian morality. Jonathan seems to be in a double state of masochistic anticipation and apprehension.
5: Camille Paglia: her notion of the female vampire as a return of a repressed fear of women and the cthconic aspects of human nature. They are demonised because they are more powerful than men.
What is the relationship between the capitalistic material world and Das Unheimliche?
As the world the emergence of capitalism also creates a distinct demarcation between social-economic space and nature, with the accumulation of consumer products belonging to the former product, the material world is sometimes imbued with uncanny resonance. This symbolises a crack in the illusion of security by which repressed content can enter the gothic imagination. Examples of this would be buildings, like haunted house and castles, or emotional evocative objects, like paintings. A good answer should include references to Poe’s “Ligeia” and “The Fall of House Usher”
How does the Gothic parody or provide a critique of the attitude of scientific reason?
By narrativising instances where the process or language of scientific investigation or ratiocination is futile against the inchoate power of nature and/or human consciousness. Give examples from Van Helsing or Poe’s unnamed narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart”.
Name the 18th/19th century discourses influencing the conception of the Gothic vampire
1: Medical discourse - the increasing social salience and studied threat of syphilis
2: Economic: the destruction or slow erasure of noble/aristocratic influence in after the industrial revolution. Vampire as revenging lost powers.
3.1: Sexuality and early psychoanalytical discourse: theory of gendered nerves, hypochondria and the early pre-Freudian psychoanalysts all discussed theories of sexuality. Fears of anti-social sexual agency influenced the concept of the vampire as a sexual monster.
3.2: Neuroticism was also being studied, especially in reference to theories of hypnotism and mesmirism.
What psychological triad often constitutes the depiction of the vampire and give an example
Angst, trauma and sadomasochism. Dracula is a terrifying creature. Contact with Dracula is traumatising. Not only because of the violence he inflicts on others, but because his bite is symbolical of a sexual contamination which awakens the repressed sexuality regulated by bourgeois taboos, especially in women. Consequently, Dracula’s sexual power is traumatic because it evidences the illusions of a coherent selfhood. Dracula is finally sadomasochistic because he enjoys the damage he inflicts and others enjoy receiving it. For example, Lucy Westenra becomes a vampire herself after being targeted by Dracula.
What does the vampire’s kiss symbolise?
Sadomasochistic love: the socially repressed violence hidden inside the hate of a love-hate relationship. The cannibalism symbolises the destructive capacity of the sex drive, equating desire for others as their destruction through consumption. This is a Freudian Eros (Sexualtrieb) inverted by aggression.
In the framework of sublime discourse, the vampire’s kiss is of the sublime rather than sublime because, although it is terrifying, the vampire assimilates their subject and spreads. A sublime object in nature, such as a maelstrom of the Usher House, cannot be psychologically assimilated. Lucy Westernra is a good example of this dynamic.
Why is hysteria important tot an understanding of Gothic literature?
Hysteria is the psychosomatic embodiment of psychological content censored by Victorian cultures reality-repression principle.
Why does Lucy Westenra become a vampire, whereas Mina Harker does not in Dracula?
Because Lucy is a representative of the has sex on her mind! She is attracted to three men, Arthur Holmwood, DoctorJohn Seward and Quincey Morris, and therefore is more vulnerable to subliminal and sexual violence Dracula inflicts. Mina Harker, as she reveals in her diary, is a sexual conservative women who prioritises her marriage to Jonathan Harker as well as the socialising function of marriage in Victorian bourgeois culture. As such, she is more resistant to Dracula’s conversion.
Why did Fred Botting describe the 18th century Gothic as a heterotopia?
Botting on the term Gothic: “Used derogatorily about art, architecture and writing that failed to conform to the standards of neoclassical taste; ‘gothic’ signified the lack of reason, morality and beauty of feudal beliefs, customs and works”. Page 3 of his essay “In Gothic Darkly.
The gothic is a “darkly imagined counter-culture”. page 12
Extra points if you associate this answer to Dracula or Poe.
Explain this quote from Freud:
“Im seelischen Unbewussten lässt sich nämlich die Herrschaft eines von Triebregungen ausgehend Wiederholungszwang erkennen, der Wahrscheinlichkeit von der innersten Triebe selbst abhängt, stark genung ist, sich über das Lustprinzip hinaussetzen, gewissen seiten des Seelenlebens den dämonischen Charakter verleiht, sich in den Strebungen der kleinen Kinds noch sehr deutlich außert in ein Stück vom Ablauf der Psychoanalyse des Neurotiker beherrscht”.
Das Unheimliche presents in art/literature as well as the psychological life of a neurotic as compulsive image, repeated in a single or variegated guise. The existence of the Das Unheimlichen can be traced back to the instinctual drives present in the psychology any child’s life; drives which are so strong that they circumvent the repression function of the Freudian pleasure principle (Lustprinzip). Consequently, uncanny symbols and characters are given a demonic character because they have circumvented the defense mechanisms which a child should have internalised in order to become more socially acceptable.
Explain this quote from Tony Magistrale:
“The impulsive male love found in Poe’s short stories always appear to embody a full range of sadomasochist motivations”:
For whatever reason, perhaps autobiographical, Poe’s male protagonists in the love stories always comport themselves with an ambivalent attitude towards women. Ligeia is both a vampire and object of the unnamed narrator’s affections. He is love for is deepened by his disdain for Rowena.
Describe the gender dynamics of Poe’s characters?
IN the love stories, the men are passive whereas the women are proactive. in the murder tales, the male are pathologically active.
