к.ф.н. Шингарева М.Ю., магистрант Калмурзаева Ж.А.

Региональный социально-инновационный университет

To the history of Gothic genre

Although Gothic writing is not limited to Great Britain and Ireland, the history will focus on England, Ireland and Scotland as the corpus created for this dissertation consists only of works by authors from those countries. The general history applies to the three countries, with an additional paragraph at the end highlighting the ways in which Scottish and Irish Gothic differ.

It has been generally accepted that the genre of Gothic Fiction began with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in 1764 (Clery 2002). Gothic fiction calls up visions of, and continuity with, the past. In fact, Walpole’s novel was initially passed off as a recovered manuscript from 1592, resulting in controversy and questions as to how a Gothic text could have a modern author (Clery 2002). The word Gothic had up to that point been associated with the middle ages and the barbarous traditions and relative ignorance that came with that time period. Thus newer Gothic works tended to be marginalized, seeming to fall outside the realm of “proper literature” (Bottig 1996). This assessment proved fortuitous for marginalized writers who now had a genre in which they could be accepted. Included are women and peasant writers who “have in common their alienation from a male, middle-class, urban literary elite” (Davidson et al. 1995, pp. 4).

De Voogd identifies a fairly long gap between the publishing of Otranto and the continuation of Gothic fiction around the 1790s (de Voogd 1995), which is agreed upon by Clery (2002). Spooner and McEvoy identify the 1820 publication of Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer as being the traditionally accepted end of the period of Gothic fiction indicating a short lifespan of the genre (Spooner & McEvoy 2007a). However, Gothic fiction can also been seen to adapt and change based on the time in which is written (Davidson et al. 1995). Thus as Romantic literature became popular in the nineteenth century, the Gothic tradition remained present, adapting and integrating itself.

The line between Gothic literature and the literature of Romanticism is blurred; early Gothic has been seen as a step towards Romanticism whereas high Gothic, or writings from the 1790s through 1820, is difficult to separate from Romanticism at all. McEvoy references a collection of essays from 1974 edited by G.R. Thompson in which Gothic was discussed as ‘Dark Romanticism’. This helps to stress the shared concepts of the genre for example, the use of the outsider and the relation to the past (McEvoy 2007a). They also share a use of the sublime setting (Bottig 1996) and an interest in the psychology of the individual. Inherent in the struggle of definition between Gothic and Romantic is the condemnation of the former as being of a lower undesirable class and of corrupting the morals of its readers. This criticism extended to novels in general to an extent, but in terms of Romanticism the writing was seen as more trivial and fanciful without the marginalization that so frequently accompanied Gothic (Bottig 1996). Gamer quotes Robert Hume as saying that “There is a persistent suspicion that Gothicism is a poor and probably illegitimate relation of Romanticism, and a consequent tendency to treat it that way. There are those, indeed, who would like to deny the relationship altogether” (Gamer 2002, pp. 85). Often authors chose to be associated with one genre or the other (McEvoy 2007a);

Walter Scott distanced himself from the Gothic in Waverly even though the novel can be seen to contain Gothic elements. Despite the contentious relationship and the problems of definition, the relationship is undeniable. Gamer discusses the appropriation of Gothic concepts by Romantic writers, and how this may have helped to bring legitimacy to the genre of Gothic Fiction (Gamer 2002). Thus the Gothic genre survived the changing times and continued to adapt as the Victorian age came about.

In 1837 Victoria was crowned Queen of Great Britain heralding in the Victorian era. In terms of Gothic writing, this era brought with it a shift of setting from foreign locales to contemporary Britain, although the present tended to be spoken of as the past, maintaining the Gothic link between past and present (Milbank 2002). The use of setting in the Victorian period was also interesting in that the action of some novels moved from the wild countryside to a more urban setting. Cities, such as London, were described as civilised but dark and the focus was still on the outsiders or marginalized. There was a new focus on imprisonment, specifically of women, within the household and this physical imprisonment could be seen as a reflection of the internal state of the characters (Milbank 2002). Additionally, while elements of the supernatural were still present, especially in the writings of the late Victorian period, there was a new focus on realism. In the realist writings, the supernatural became implied. For example Miss Havisham and Magwitch in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations have ghost like qualities and are at first assumed to be ghosts when in actuality they are not. These adaptations of the genre can be seen particularly in the writings of Charlotte and Emily Bronte as well as Charles Dickens, three writers who are seen as being critical in maintaining and evolving the genre during this time (Warwick 2007).

From 1880 onward, there was a focus on science as an explanation for the supernatural as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Warwick 2007) although it should be noted that this was not entirely new as the quest for new science played a large role in earlier writings such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Important was the increased knowledge of Darwin’s theory of evolution which blurred the boundaries between human and animal making some of the monstrous transformations more plausible. Other important pieces such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula saw a return to the sublime and a focus on old castles or earlier writings so that again the genre provided links not only with the history of the world, but between the present and past of the genre itself. The contemporary discomfort with homosexuality and the ‘New Woman,’ or feminist, was also reflected in the writing (Bottig 1996).

In Scotland and Ireland many of the Gothic conventions above remained the same. However, there was a greater focus on nationalism and the idea of an identity separate from that of England (Spooner & McEvoy 2007). The Scottish Gothic novels focused on the past, particularly the era of the Jacobite rebellions. Interestingly in some of the Scottish Gothic, as well as in many Gothic novels about Scotland, Scots are portrayed unfavourably. Offering a possible explanation for this, Wright feels that the Scottish Gothic expresses feelings of identity crisis and shows inconsistencies between recorded history and the actual population (Wright 2007). Punter sees this exploration of different images and histories as a search for where the nation went wrong in achieving independence (Punter 2002). In terms of the Irish Gothic, while several important Gothic authors are Irish, such as Maturin, Stoker, and Le Fanu, Gothic studies are not a significant part of Irish studies, although Irish Gothic is an accepted part of Gothic studies. Irish Gothic also explores the idea of nation and independence, and additionally it focuses on the religious marginalization of Protestants by Catholics (Punter 2002).

It is important to note that the Gothic genre continues to adapt and has been incorporated into contemporary culture (Spooner & McEvoy 2007).

Bibliography

1. Clery, E.J. 2002. ‘The genesis of “Gothic” fiction’ in Hogle, J.E (Ed.). 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

2. Bottig, F. 1996. Gothic. London and New York: Routledge.

3. Davidson, P, J. Stevenson, and V. Tinkler-Villani. 1995. ‘Introduction’ in Tinkler-Villani, V. and P. Davidson (Eds.). 1995. Exhibited by Candlelight Sources and Developments in the Gothic Tradition. Amsterdam and Atlanta GA: Rodopi.

4. De Voogd, P. 1995. ‘Sentimental horrors: Feeling in the Gothic novel’ in Tinkler-Villani, V. and P. Davidson (Eds.). 1995. Exhibited by Candlelight Sources and Developments in the Gothic Tradition. Amsterdam and Atlanta GA: Rodopi.

5. Spooner, C. and E. McEvoy. 2007a. ‘Introduction’ in Spooner, C. and E. McEvoy (Eds.). 2007. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. London and New York: Routledge.

6. McEvoy, E. 2007a. ‘Gothic and the Romantics’ in Spooner, C. and E. McEvoy (Eds.). 2007. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. London and New York: Routledge.

7. Gamer, M. 2002. ‘Gothic fictions and Romantic writing in Britain’ in Hogle, J.E (Ed.). 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

8. Milbank, A. 2002. ‘The Victorian Gothic in English novels and stories, 1830-1880’ in Hogle, J.E (Ed.). 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge:Cambridge UP.

9. Warwick, A. 2007. ‘Victorian Gothic’ in Spooner, C. and E. McEvoy (Eds.). 2007. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. London and New York: Routledge.

10. Wright, A. 2007. ‘Scottish Gothic’ in Spooner, C. and E. McEvoy (Eds.). 2007. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. London and New York: Routledge.

11. Punter, D. 2002. ‘Scottish and Irish Gothic’ in Hogle, J.E (Ed.). 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.