THE GOTHIC TIMELINE Flashcards
TIME PERIOD:
1700s / 18th century (core Gothic)
- philosophical shift away from scientific rationalism
- emphasis on reason, rather than feeling/emotion
NOVELISTS:
1700s/18th Century (core Gothic
Horace Walpole
Ann Radcliffe
Matthew Lewis
TYPICAL FEATURES:
1700s / 18th century (core Gothic)
Terror / supernatural / castles / forests / dread / irrational violence / women under threat / ghosts / patriarchal oppression
OTHER CONTEXTS:
1700s / 18th century (core gothic)
Wars (e.g England was at war with France in 1775 for nearly 10 years)
1789/1788 - French Revolution
TIME PERIOD:
Late 1700s-early 1800s (romantic-era Gothic)
cross-over texts: aspects of the Gothic used in “romantic” texts
- a way of exploring accepted boundaries and social conventions
NOVELISTS:
Late 1700s-early 1800s (romantic-era Gothic)
Mary Shelley
James Hogg
TYPICAL FEATURES:
Late 1700s-early 1800s (romantic-era Gothic)
sublime / tyranny / position of women / horror / terror / justice / injustice / boundaries and limits / emotion over reason
OTHER CONTEXTS:
Late 1700s-early 1800s (romantic-era Gothic)
Late 1700s-1800s: industrial revolution
Mid 1700s onwards: scientific experiments such as Galvanism (exploring the origins of life)
TIME PERIOD:
1800s / 19th century Gothic
- can be known as Victorian Gothic
- aspects of Gothic incorporated into domestic novel / detective fiction
NOVELISTS:
1800s / 19th century Gothic
Charlotte Brontë
Charles Dickens
Edgar Allen Poe
TYPICAL FEATURES:
1800s / 19th century Gothic
Opposites / otherness / anxiety / class / race and gender difference / origins / doubles / psychological complexity
OTHER CONTEXTS:
1800s / 19th century Gothic
1800s: middle class as a result of the Industrial Revolution
1859 - Charles Darwin publishes “The Origin of the Species”
TIME PERIOD:
1880s-early 1900s (fin de siècle Gothic)
end of century gothic - responding to emerging evolutionary, social and medical theories
NOVELISTS:
1880s-early 1900s (fin de siècle Gothic)
Oscar Wilde
Bram Stoker
TYPICAL FEATURES:
1880s-early 1900s (fin de siècle Gothic)
doubling / degeneration / doubt / fantasy / psychological landscapes / criminology
OTHER CONTEXTS:
1880s-early 1900s (fin de siècle Gothic)
1896: Max Nordau publishes “Degeneration”
1919: Freud publishes paper on “The Uncanny”, using examples from Gothic stories to illustrate
TIME PERIOD:
1900s - present (American gothic)
Southern Gothic emerges - using Gothic to explore personal / social trauma arising from the legacy of slavery and civil war
NOVELISTS:
1900s - present (American gothic)
Harper Lee
Stephen King
Edgar Allen Poe
TYPICAL FEATURES:
1900s - present (American gothic)
Supernatural tension / grotesque / alienation / crime / violence / decay / taboo subjects / the past
OTHER CONTEXTS:
1900s - present (American gothic)
1930s: Jim Crow laws, enforce segregation, along with lynching and KKK common in Southern states
1950s-60s: civil rights movement
TIME PERIOD:
1900s - present (British gothic)
Often a response to social and cultural contexts
NOVELISTS:
1900s - present (British gothic)
Daphne du Maurice
Angela Carter
Iain Banks
Susan Hill
TYPICAL FEATURES:
1900s - present (British gothic)
dislocation / grotesque / gender / anxiety / transgression / instability
OTHER CONTEXTS:
1900s - present (British gothic)
1914-18: WWI
1939-45: WWII
1960s onwards: rise of feminism
what did the Gothic emerge from?
- the Enlightenment, which sought to destablise rationality and the beliefs of religion through superstition and the supernatural, as a response to the uncertainties surrounding this transition.
during 1970s….
- link to Sue Chaplin
women’s liberation movement fought to dismantle the notion that ‘femininity is essentially passive’
1781 - Galvanism example
- Lugi Galvani used electricity to cause a violent spasm to occur in the frog’s leg - giving the illusion that the frog had come back to life
women burnt at the stake as they were thought to be witches - yet they simply did not act ‘normal’
1560-1630
