ALL summary notes used for A Level English Literature OCR gothic exam to achieve 99% overall (10 pages)
Includes:
- summaries of key gothic texts from such as The Castle of Otranto, The Woman in White, The Woman in Black, Frankenstein, Carmilla, Vathek, The Monk and many more
- example phrases ...
❑ Narration
❑ Title and time period
❑ Setting
❑ Characters
❑ Language, structure, form
❑ Mood and atmosphere
❑ Psychological effects
BURKE / SUBLIME 1757
ROMANTICISM 1790s-1850s
DARWIN 1859
VICTORIA 1837-1901
FREUD UNCANNY 1919
• A ghost is something from the past that is out of its proper time or place and which brings with it a demand, a
curse or a plea. Ghosts, like gothics, disrupt our sense of what is present and what is past, what is ancient and
what is modern, which is why a novel like Dracula is as full of the modern technology of its period –
typewriters, shorthand, recording machines – as it is of vampires, destruction and death.
• THE PROTAGONIST RECOGNISES THEIR FEAR BUT FAILS TO LOCATE ITS ORIGNIS, ADHERING TO THE GOTHIC
TROPE OF THE UNCANNY DEFINED IN FREUDIAN TERMS AS THE FEAR OF THAT WHICH IS SIMULTANEOUSLY
STRANGE YET FAMILIAR
• Doubles and doppelgangers - motif combines a sense of supernatural horror with a philosophical inquiry
concerning personal identity, along with a psychological inquiry into the concealed and complicated depths of
the human psyche / the doppelganger is both duplicate and opposite, showing how opposing forces can exist in
one being and forcing us to confront our divided selves
• Nature out of control - outside sublime and uncontrollable power of nature reflects power of instinctual inner
desires that society suppresses
• Presence of the past. Gothic literature originated as a way of writing about the past, most often the Middle Ages
(formerly known as Gothic ages) with their legacy of Catholic superstition and folk belief. That past is made
simultaneously fascinating and threatening. It follows that a familiar Gothic approach is to show how the past of
an old house or a community or even a nation can resonate in the imagination of present-day inhabitants. The
historian, the antiquarian and the keeper of oral memory are thus important figures in the Gothic tradition.
• Unusual narrative voice/viewpoint. From early days writers of Gothic made use of multiple narrators, unusual
viewpoints and/or narrative voices. This is often to convey a confined, obsessive experience (the narrator
imparting his or her own fear) but it may also communicate a strong sense of verisimilitude.
, • Suspense. Gothic writing majors in suspense. Description is often expansive, dialogue hesitant and nervous,
narrative voice can shift, there may even be cross-cutting from one scene to another to delay revelation. The
effect is to build inner tension and to strengthen emotional response.
• Setting. The most significant feature of a Gothic passage is usually the setting. This may involve conventional
materials, eg ecclesiastical ruins, pointed windows, but it may also feature swishing trees and windy spaces. The
key point is that an internal state of mind becomes externalized on the fabric of a building or landscape, with
effects of mental absorption or distortion very like those of expressionist theatre or cinema. The important thing
is not to list the architectural features but discuss their emotional impact.
• Supernatural. Often Gothic makes use of the supernatural. If there is no doubt about the ghosts (Count Dracula
is certainly a vampire) the reader is invited to suspend his or her disbelief and read the story as a kind of
literalized metaphor; if the supernatural content remains in doubt, so does the possibility of direct
psychological explanation.
• Dark laughter. Almost all Gothic invites a humorous response. This may be part of an ironic fashion statement; it
may be an attempt to cloak transgressive content in humour and irony; but it also reflects that a formidable
human preservative against horror is (dark) laughter.
THE GOTHIC PRIVELIGES ENTERTAINMENT/ Literary reputation debated yet always in fashion
• Gothic origins gothic revival reaction against classical tradition, soaring perspectives of architecture links to
Sublime and religious or emotional intensity
• reflect essential human nature and desires / parodied by Austen’s 1817 Northanger Abbey / Walpole had to
defend supernatural events of The Castle of Otranto 1764 / Radcliffe’s explained supernatural gave
respectability to genre
Psychological
• Terror vs. Horror - Terror expands soul while horror contracts it according to Radcliffe ’s late C18 definition,
unambiguous horror or anticipation and ambiguity of terror
• Physical horrors can be escaped unlike psychological terrors of the mind
• The depiction of horrible events in Gothic fiction often serves as a metaphorical expression of psychological or
social conflicts
• HUME attempt to involve the reader in special circumstances. Terror-Gothic plays on the reader's response to
suspense, while horror-Gothic attempts to involve him with the villain-hero protagonist. Both types share an
interest in the characters' psychology, and both kinds may be regarded as statements or correlatives of the
author's state of mind.
• Evolution from physical horrors of early gothic to later psychological terror
• This sense of wonder and terror that provides the suspension of disbelief so important to the Gothic—which,
except for when it is parodied, even for all its occasional melodrama, is typically played straight, in a self -serious
manner—requires the imagination of the reader to be willing to accept the idea that there might be something
"beyond that which is immediately in front of us." The need for this came as the known world was becoming
more explored, reducing the geographical mysteries of the world. The edges of the map were filling in, and no
dragons were to be found.
• the Gothic novel offers no conclusions / it emphasizes psychological reaction to evil and leads into a tangle of
moral ambiguity for which no meaningful answers can be found
• Eighteenth and nineteenth century Romanticism rejected logic and rationality of earlier Enlightenment, instead
focusing on individual, emotion, freedom from rules, idealization of nature and the sublime / In its highest forms
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