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Unseen Gothic Revision :!!: - Coggle Diagram
Unseen Gothic Revision
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Gothic texts locate the monstrous not within specters and supernatural creatures but within humans-ordinary people.
the gothic can be fantastic or familiar, suggestive or explicit, filled with horror or prompting terror- the texts are consumed by oppositions.
Gothic texts explore the fear and mistrust of power, of the ‘unknown’, of sexuality, the supernatural and anything else that might be designated in any particular period as ‘other’
All Gothic texts have the ability to invoke fear
The Gothic encapsulates anything associated with the Dark Ages, tension and the feeling of unease
A03
: origins of the Gothic genre
The word ‘Gothic’ originally referred to the barbarian tribes of northern Europe who were believed to have brought down the Roman Empire when they invaded central and southern Europe in the 5th century
As Roman society was closely associated with order and reason, the Visigoths were consequently seen as savage, brutal and irrational
The refinement of Rome / trend for Neoclassical in the C18th (contemporary literature, art and architecture draw inspiration from the classical culture of Ancient Greece) the Gothic was a reaction against Neoclassicism
AO5 David Punter: where the classical was well-ordered, the Gothic was chaotic, where the classics offered a set of cultural models, the Gothic represented excess and exaggeration – the product of the wild and uncivilized
C18 Gothic
The eighteenth century gothic movement was a reaction to the dominance of the Enlightenment emphasis on reason and rationalism and was seen by some as the natural literary result of the violence and terror of the French revolution.
The excesses, stereotypes and frequent absurdities of the gothic genre made it rich territory for satire. The age is also known as the Neoclassical period.
In 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's debut novel Frankenstein, marked a shift in Gothic horror by changing the typical gothic villain from an evil man or supernatural creature into an physical embodiment of human folly, brought to life through the power of science.
The Castle of Otranto, novel by Horace Walpole, is considered the first Gothic novel in the English language, and is often said to have founded the horror story as a legitimate literary form.
Typical settings include buildings like castles, graveyards ,caves, dungeons or religious houses like churches and chapels. They are often old ,decaying buildings, usually set in remote, hidden places such as the wilderness of a forest or in the isolation of the mountains.
Gothic novels and dramas of the eighteenth century often feature women protagonists who experienced terror at the thought of being married to a villain, kidnapped, imprisoned or murdered.
Characteristics :death and decay, haunted homes/castles, family curses, madness, powerful love/romance, ghosts and vampires. The genre is said to have become popular in the late 18th century with the publication of Horace Walpole's novel 'The castle of Otranto' 1764
Transgression, Horror , Obscurity , Inhuman , Terror , oppositions and liminal. Sublime, guilt , supernatural , repression , doppelganger , revenant , the other , the uncanny , orientalism.
Anxieties : the contrast between human and science and superstition , the fear of the foreign , sexuality and homosexuality and the rise of the new woman. The contrast between science and superstition was represented by the clash between Eastern European folklore and the industrialisation of Britain.