Gothic chronology

Core Gothic (dates, characteristics, typical tropes, settings)

1760-1790s. Age of Enlightenment, thus tension between scientific rationalism and the supernatural/emotional excess/chaos of the human experience. Satanic bargaining, women under threat, sexuality, medieval Catholicism, terror > horror. Castles/monasteries with labyrinthine corridors, sense of foreboding/entrapment/oppression.

Romantic Gothic (dates, characteristics, typical tropes, settings, key texts)

1790s-early 1830s/40s. Emphasis on individuality, anti-establishment attitudes, imagination as a powerful force. The sublime, intense emotional subjectivity, tyranny. Isolated or decaying settings, often haunted literally or metaphorically. Frankenstein (1818). On the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) by Edmund Burke.

Victorian Gothic (dates, setting as informed by, historical context, typical tropes, key texts)

1830s/40s-1880s. Domestic Gothic, as well as urban Gothic due to Industrial Revolution and sense of alienation/decay/anonymity. Rise of the British Empire and colonial expansion – the Other, reverse colonisation, fear of degeneration and miscegenation. Civilisation and savagery, transformation, anxiety about class/race/gender difference, sensationalism, increasingly characterised by psychological complexity, phenomena such as splitting/doubling. Jane Eyre (1847), Wuthering Heights (1847). Darwin and Patmore.

Fin de Siecle Gothic (dates, historical context, typical tropes, key texts)

1880s-1914. End-of-century texts responding to emerging evolutionary, social, and medical theories. 1885 Criminal Amendment Act criminalises homosexuality (‘gross indecency’), 1888 Jack the Ripper, 1895 Trial of Oscar Wilde for gross indecency. Doubling, degeneration, decadence, amorality, duality, monstrosity. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Dracula (1897), The Turn of the Screw (1898) The Uncanny by Sigmund Freud (1919).

American/Southern Gothic (dates, historical context, tropes, texts)

1920s-present. Uses Gothic to explore personal and social trauma arising from the legacy of slavery and civil war. Supernatural tension, trauma/damaged characters, delusions, crime, taboo. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987) and Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice (1976).

Modern Gothic (dates, historical context, texts)

1900s-present. Response to social/cultural contexts, oftentimes subversive – relevant contexts include the two world wars, women’s liberation, feminist theory etc. Persecution, transgression, role-reversal, Oedipal conflict, dystopia, anxiety. Rebecca (1938), The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979), The Woman in Black (1983), The Yellow Wallpaper (1982)