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Literature of the Gothic Tradition - Notes
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Two pages of notes on the Gothic Tradition - including a range of texts from 1764 (The Castle of Otranto) to 1886 (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde).
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The Gothic Tradition - NotesThe Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, 1764
● Considered to have created the gothic genre
● Walpole was fascinated by mediaeval history, even building a folly to live in -
Strawberry Hill House
● This original was published as a translation of an ancient italian manuscript found in
Naples in 1529, however it was claimed that manuscript dated much further back, as
far as the first crusades
● The book appeared as a manifestation of Walpole’s dissatisfaction with the
neoclassical style of the time
● Walpole intended to get to the bottom of people’s psychological motivations by
pushing them from the ordinary into the extraordinary to see how they would react
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, 1794
● In The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe introduces ‘the explained supernatural’, a
technique by which terrifying, apparently supernatural incidents have a logical
explanation.
● Over the course of her previous novels, Radcliffe developed the formula of ‘the
female Gothic’. The formula is perfected in Udolpho, and has since become a Gothic
norm.
The Monk by Matthew Lewis, 1796
● Lewis’s novel about the misdeeds of a spoiled priest features incestuous necrophilia,
matricide, cannibalism, voyeurism, and a satanic pact – not to mention an incredibly
gory finale.
● It was one of the characters censoring the Bible, however, which most upset its
contemporaries – as well as the fact that its teenage author was an MP.
● The novel, which has been retrospectively classed as ‘Male Gothic', features the
genre’s typical themes of a lone male, exiled and an outsider
The ‘lake Geneva’ stories of 1816
● Lord Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, and Polidori meet in the Villa Diodati in the
summer of 1816, and the following gothic novels are born out of a ghost story fiction
competition
Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) by Mary Shelley, 1816
● The novel tells of a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a hideous
human creature during an unorthodox experiment
● Shelley’s story features many Gothic spine-tingling elements, including the macabre
horror of raising the dead.
● The novel is often considered to be the first in the science fiction genre. Many believe
it to be a warning about the dangers of contemporary science.
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