James Ward, Gordale Scar, 1814,

London, Tate Gallery

TheGothicnovel
Performer - Culture & Literature

Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,

Margaret Layton 2012

The Gothic novel

1. The origin of the name

It came to popularity at the end of the 18th century

The adjective Gothic
three connotations

Medieval, linked
to the architecture
of the 12th-14th
centuries

Performer - Culture&Literature

Irregular,
barbarous,
opposed to
Classicism

Wild, supernatural,
in the sense of
mysterious

The Gothic novel

2. Influences

The 18th-century
society

The sublime

Industrial exploitation
Destruction of the single human
being.
Man as a slave to forces he could not
control.
Gothic symbols as denunciation of
social problems.

Performer - Culture&Literature

As a celebration of terror.
As a rejection of constraints and
limits.
As exploration of forbidden areas.

The Gothic novel

3. The Gothic setting

Great importance given to
terror, characterised by
obscurity and uncertainty,
and horror, caused by evil
and atrocity.
Darkness, a necessary
ingredient for the
mysterious, gloomy
atmosphere.

Performer - Culture&Literature

The Gothic novel

3. The Gothic setting

Ancient settings isolated
castles and mysterious abbeys
with hidden passages,
underground cellars, secret
rooms.
Catholic countries as the
setting for the most terrible
crimes, due to Protestant
prejudices against
Catholicism.

Performer - Culture&Literature

The Gothic novel

4. The characters

Characters dominated by exaggerated

reactions in front of mysterious situations or
events.

Supernatural beings: vampires, monsters

and ghosts.

Sensitive heroes: they save heroines.

Heroines stricken by unreal terrors and

persecuted by the villains.

Satanic, terrifying male characters, victims

of their negative impulses

Performer - Culture&Literature

Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Fssli),

The Nightmare, 1781, Goethe Museum,
Frankfurt

The Gothic novel

5. The language

Gothic writers chose vocabulary that referred to emotions and feelings, capable of
evoking anxiety, fear or horror.
Semantic areas

Words

Mystery

enchantment, ghost, haunted, infernal, magic, secret, spectre,

vision

Anger

agony, anguish, apprehensions, despair, dread, fearing,

frightened, hopeless, horror, melancholy, miserable, panic,
sadly, scared, shrieks, sorrow, tears, terror, unhappy,
wretched
anxious, breathless, frantic, hastily, impatient, running,
suddenly
anger, enraged, furious, rage, resentment, wrath

Largeness

enormous, gigantic, large, tremendous, vast

Fear / Terror /
Sorrow
Haste

Performer - Culture&Literature

The Gothic novel

6. Metonimy
Metonymy: a subtype of metaphor, in which something is used to stand for
something else. The following metonymies for doom and gloom suggest elements of
mystery, danger, or the supernatural and are common in Gothic novels.

Elements of nature

Setting

Characters

wind, especially howling; gusts of wind

blowing out lights
rain, especially blowing
thunder and lightning
doors grating on rusty hinges
clanking chains
lights in abandoned rooms
doors suddenly slamming shut
ruins of buildings
barking
of distant
dogs
/ wolves
sighs, moans,
howls,
strange
sounds
characters trapped in a room
footsteps approaching
crazed laughter

Performer- Culture&Literature

The Gothic novel

7. First Gothic authors

Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Ann Radcliffe The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Matthew Lewis The Monk (1796)
Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818)

Performer - Culture&Literature

The Gothic novel

8. Popularity

Great interest during the 18th century common to all strata

of society.
The features of Gothic novels preserved in modern and
contemporary descendents of this genre in the works of:
Charlotte Bront
Edgar Allan Poe
Robert Louis Stevenson
Bram Stoker

Performer - Culture&Literature