the gothic genre

Early gothic: 1764-1800

what did the genre begin as?

Sophisticated joke

Early gothic: 1764-1800

what did it provide authors with to address contemporary issues?

Imaginative ways

Early gothic: 1764-1800

Where did the action take place? Where were they often set in?

• crumbling castles

• Torch lit monasteries

• Exotic landscapes and distant times

Early gothic: 1764-1800

Who were the villians?

Dissolute catholic noblemen and sex-crazed monks

Early gothic: 1764-1800

What would readers engage in?

A pleasing sort of terror (psychological/anticipated)

Early gothic: 1764-1800

The monk - turns ____ and ultimately sells soul to the ______ ; what type of violence? What type of setting?

• Turns evil and sells soul to the devil

• Sexual violence

• Corrupt churches

Romantic gothic 1800-50:

• both gothic and romantic writings are a product of…

• The difference is romantic writing is a product of… whereas gothic writing

• profound reaction against everyday reality and conventional religious explanations of existence

• Faith, gloomy exploration of a man’s limitations

Romantic gothic 1800-50:

What was it inspired by in the wake of the French Revolution?

• political + philosophical idealism

Romantic gothic 1800-50:

Where are they often set?

In the sublime - a sense of awe in the face of something much bigger than ourselves e.g landscape, power or emotion

Romantic gothic 1800-50:

What notion did it challenge which priotised rationality over emotions ? What anxieties did it encapsulate?

• enlightenment ideas

• Anxieties over science

Romantic gothic 1800-50:

Who was the model for gothic heros?

• lord byron - anti-hero, rejects norms imperfect, cynical

Romantic gothic 1800-50:

What was gothic literature a counter of?

• a signif aspect of the counter revoultion / enlightenment often classed as romantic

Romantic gothic 1800-50:

Frankenstein ; scientist’s…. - What was the weather in the novel often like?

• scientist’s doomed monster

• Weather is always stormy thunder

Gothic in mid 19th cen:

What did gothic tropes start to incorporate?

• Other genres + mainstream victorian fiction (focus on social ills lent on naturalistic fiction)

• Naturalistic fiction = real life, subjectivity, determinism etc. positivist like

Gothic in mid 19th cen:

What was often the backdrop? Where were the typical gothic tropes set??

• empire + industrialisation

• Urban settings

Gothic in mid 19th cen:

Wuthering heights - what are supernatural elements? How is love portrayed here?

• ghosts and spirits but ambiguous

• Forbidden love

Gothic in the late 19th cen:

-imperial gothic reflects…

• late victorian society haunted by the implications or challenges to trad world view

Gothic in the late 19th cen:

• what fears did it encapsulate?

• post-Darwinian

Gothic in the late 19th cen:

• what is the end of the century?

• fin-de-siede

Gothic in the late 19th cen:

• what is no longer the landscape for the source of terror?

• physical but now the human mind

Gothic in the late 19th cen:

• what fears?

• Notion of the human body…. In response to

• human body changes mutates, corrupts decays in response to merging evolutionary, social + medical theories

• Fears of miscengation, infection and invasion haunt these texts

Gothic in the late 19th cen:

• the strange case of dr Jekyll and mr hyde

• Dracula

• The picture of dorian gray; how is post-darwinian fears represented symbolically? literally? What are some features of the urban setting?

• portrait gray’s degeneration

• Desire to stay young, obsession with looks

• Urban setting, rain, lamps, drunks in bars

20th + 21st cen gothic / contemporary gothic:

• what has it influenced?

• What is it influenced by? (4)

• influenced literature, film and beyond

• Influences of freudian ideas e.g regression to cope, fucking ya mother, first to consider narcissism and post war, cold war, communism

20th + 21st cen gothic / contemporary gothic:

• what does the genre do which is quite post-modernist?

• resists categorisation therefore assimilate to mainstream

20th + 21st cen gothic / contemporary gothic:

• twilight, let the right one in (vampire zeitgeist) - features?

• Pedophiles, social commentary on immigration

Southern Gothic:

What does American literature do with gothic tropes?

• reveal ideologies of American exceptionalism rely on repressing the nation’s history of slavery, racism and patriarchy

Southern Gothic:

• What is the black gothic revival?

• what it means to be black in a nation still structured by violent white supremacy

Southern Gothic:

• what tropes?

• Settings?

• darkness, madness, ghosts and isolation

• Dilapidated plantations equivalent to the gothic castle

southern gothic:

• what ideas are explored?

• brutality of slavery

• Jim crow lynchings

• Contemp violence, racial hostilities

Southern gothic:

• Beloved

• A street car named desire: features?

• madness

• sexual violence

• Ptsd