When a person thinks about gothic today, they might think of a sparkly vampire or a hunky Frankenstein in popularized films. This has led to parodies upon these adaptations of the gothic. This relationship between traditional gothic characters and parodies is not a new subject but a very interesting dynamic. I would like to discuss how one scene from the typical gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, and a scene from Jane Austen’s parody of the gothic novel in Northanger Abbey contrast in many different ways to illustrate gothic tropes as well as Austen’s perspective view on the subject of the gothic through the use of, diction, setting, character and tone.
The diction in each novel is very different for both. In The Castle of Otranto, Walpole uses words like, “curdled”, “terror”, and “darkness” which connote a negativity meaning (Walpole 28). This is a traditional gothic trope in the sense that these words are the basic vocabulary usually used in gothic novels. Using these types of words create a dark or fearful atmosphere that is essential for the mood of traditional gothic novels.
The diction that is used in Northanger Abbey depicts the gothic in a different light. Austen writes phrases and words such as, "fine old place,” “explore our way,” and “snugly” which set up a different atmosphere for the reader (Austen 161). “Fine old place” doesn’t connote anything dark or negative like in Walpole’s novel, but more of a place that is homely with a lot of shared family memories like the average English home would be like (Austen 161). This gives off a positive vibe to readers. “Explore our way” implies that the place of topic is welcome and open for visitors (Austen 161). The environment is welcoming unlike the scen...
... middle of paper ...
...’s not reality.
In final, the contrast between traditional gothic tropes and the parody of the gothic is very evident in Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Through the contrast between diction, setting, characterization, and tone, it is made clear what the traditional gothic tropes are and how they represent themselves in Walpole’s novel, while the gothic parody is illustrating how reality and the fictitious world of the gothic should be two separate entities for readers of this genre to Austen. All in all both illustrate something significant about the gothic genre and how it is crafted and viewed.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane, Barbara M. Benedict, and Deirdre Le Faye. Northanger Abbey. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2006.
Walpole, Horace, and W. S. Lewis. The castle of Otranto: A gothic story. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.
Various authors develop their stories using gothic themes and characterizations of this type to lay the foundation for their desired reader response. Although Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Peter Taylor’s “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time” are two completely different narratives, both of these stories share a commonality of gothic text representations. The stories take slightly different paths, with Poe’s signifying traditional gothic literature and Taylor approaching his story in a more contemporary manner.
I offer by way of introduction to the Gothic literary world an extract taken from Ann. B Tracy’s book The Gothic Novel 1790-1830: Plot Summaries and Index Motifs:
The setting is gothic litereature is commonly located in a Victorian-styled environment, with dull shades of black and white pointed architecture. Some of the place described in the Gothic writing are old, abdondoned house, castles, or
Gothic Literature was a natural progression from romanticism, which had existed in the 18th Century. Initially, such a ‘unique’ style of literature was met with a somewhat mixed response; although it was greeted with enthusiasm from members of the public, literary critics were much more dubious and sceptical.
In what follows, my research paper will rely on an article by Kathy Prendergast entitled “Introduction to The Gothic Tradition”. The significance of this article resides in helping to recapitulate the various features of the Gothic tradition. In this article the authoress argues that in order to overturn the Enlightenment and realistic literary mores, many of the eighteenth century novelists had recourse to traditional Romantic conventions in their works of fiction, like the Arthurian legendary tales (Prendergast).
Written in 1818, the latter stages of the Gothic literature movement, at face value this novel embodies all the key characteristics of the Gothic genre. It features the supernatural, ghosts and an atmosphere of horror and mystery. However a closer reading of the novel presents a multifaceted tale that explores
The inclusions of gothic conventions of the same variety create a gothic genre for the novel. The use of the weather in the form of pathetic fallacies is particularly important in the way this forms the novel to be gothic. As the description of the weather evokes an atmosphere of suspense and the many connotations associated to the weather in particular the stereotype...
Punter David, ‘The Literature of Terror’, in A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day, The Modern Gothic. Harlow, eds. (UK: Pearson Education, 1996)
Word by word, gothic literature is bound to be an immaculate read. Examining this genre for what it is could be essential to understanding it. “Gothic” is relating to the extinct East Germanic language, people of which known as the Goths. “Literature” is defined as a written work, usually with lasting “artistic merit.” Together, gothic literature combines the use of horror, death, and sometimes romance. Edgar Allan Poe, often honored with being called the king of horror and gothic poetry, published “The Fall of House Usher” in September of 1839. This story, along with many other works produced by Poe, is a classic in gothic literature. In paragraph nine in this story, one of our main characters by the name of Roderick Usher,
In conclusion to this essay, having examined these 19th century gothic texts, it is fair to say that normative gender behaviour and sexuality pervades them. This element gives the reader a deep insight into the culture context of the time in which these stories are situated. It enables the reader to delve into the darker sides of humanity at that time, that they would not have been able to do otherwise.
In many ways the fascination with the gothic style of art, represented by music, literature, film, and others, is nothing more than a way for the observer to escape from real life and its many responsibilities. Gothic art claims to be profound and contain great esoteric meaning with life changing impact, yet the characters and the message are more often weak, unproductive, crippled, or even mad. Examples of this flaw in the argument in favor of the gothic imagination are given in the works by Beethoven, Goethe, Rice, and Gilman. It will be revealed that these authors have been misguided often by their own escapist nature to create a false reality and promote it as meaningful. In truth, the gothic imagination is the imagination of those who are looking for an excuse for their laziness and purpose behind their protective depression.
Brown’s perspective on the European fiction that, while gothic and therefore focusing on “superstition and exploded manners, gothic castles and chimeras”, merely appealed to popular taste and as such held the consensus that reading fiction was an idle pastime (Elliot, ix). Brown’s aim was to change the general consensus of fiction reading and create a genre that challenged readers to use their full intellectual capacity. He did this in Wieland through not only the dialectic, but also through allusions to the climate of the world he was living in. If we are to take Wieland as a representative for the American gothic, then the genre must achieve that goal.
Romanticism played a large role in the creation of gothic literature, and it was considered to be “a lunatic fringe version of romanticism” (Tiffin). Gothic novels often had a powerful unleashing of emotions to very extreme levels “beyond social constraining” (Tiffin). The genre’s character often had an excess of a specific type (Tiffin), and in an analysis of Frankenstein and Northanger Abbey, this excess can be seen in Frankenstein’s ambition and Catherine’s curiosity.
The period of the gothic novel, in which the key gothic texts were produced, is commonly considered to be roughly between 1760 and 1820. A period that extended from what is accepted as the first gothic novel, Horace Walpoles The Castle of Otranto ( 1764 ), to Charles Maturins Melmoth the Wanderer ( 1820 ) and included the first edition of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein in 1818. In general, the gothic novel has been associated with a rebellion against constraining neoclassical aesthetic ideals of order and unity, in order to recover a suppressed primitive and barbaric imaginative freedom ( Kilgour, 1995, p3 ). It is also often considered to be a premature ( and thus somewhat crude ) manifestation of the emerging values of Romanticism. Although the gothic genre is somewhat shadowy and difficult to define it can be seen as having a number of characteristics or conventions which can be observed in Frankenstein including stereotypical settings, characters and plots, an interest in the sublime, the production of excessive emotion in the reader ( particularly that of terror and horror), an emphasis on suspense, the notion of the double and the presence of the supernatural. (Kilgour, 1995; Botting, 1996 ; Byron, 1998 : p71 )
Michael Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 15, Questia, Web, 29 May 2010.