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    Gothic Novel

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    amitendubanerjeeo

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    Gothic Novel

    Uploaded by

    amitendubanerjeeo
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    3 views1 page

    Gothic Novel

    Uploaded by

    amitendubanerjeeo

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 1

    Write a note on the development of Gothic novels

    According to Roland Carter, ‘the link between the sublime and terror is most clearly seen in the
    imaginative exaggeration of the Gothic novel.’ Gothic novel is a novelistic form which concentrated on the
    fantastic, the macabre and the supernatural, with haunted castles, spectres from the grave and wild landscapes. It
    is significant that the term ‘Gothic’ originally had mediaeval connotations. The novels of the 1760s to the 1790s,
    however, gave the term ‘Gothic’ the generic meaning of horror fantasy.
    The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was the first of this kind. It is a story of mediaeval times, set in
    Southern Italy, with castles, vaults, ghosts, statues which come to life, appearances and disappearances. Passion,
    grief and terror are the main elements of the plot. Strange religious characters abound in Gothic novels, from Friar
    Jerome in Walpole to Ambrosio, the hero of The Monk by Matthew Lewis. Like many texts of its times, Walpole’s
    novel purported to be a translation of an ancient manuscript dating from the eleventh or twelfth century. However,
    The Castle of Otranto is not without its originality. In The Castle of Otranto Manfred holds the domain of Otranto
    through the villainy of his grandfather, who murdered Alphonso the Good. He rules in defiance of Frederick—
    apparently, a nearer heir—and both are ignorant of the existence of Theodore, direct heir of the supposedly
    childless Alphonso. The unknown ‘peasant’ Theodore falls in love with Manfred’s daughter Matilda, while
    Manfred wickedly persecutes Frederick’s daughter Isabella with determination to marry her. He tries to hold her
    prisoner in the castle, which is linked happily to the nearby monastery by a mysterious underground passage.
    Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho is another Gothic romance. It deals with the story of Emily St
    Aubert. Bereft of her parents, she is carried off from the proximity of her loved friend, Valancourt, by the sinister
    Signor Montoni who has married her aunt. His castle in the Apennines is alive with dim figures in the moonlight
    and echoing groans where no man is. Equipped with trapdoors and secret corridors, ‘its mouldering walls of dark
    grey stone’ render it a ‘gloomy and sublime object’. Mrs Radcliffe’s landscapes are tremendous. Scott claimed
    for her the title, ‘the first poetess of romantic fiction.’
    Clara Reeve, with The Old English Baron enjoyed even greater success than her model, Walpole’s The
    Castle of Otranto. Among her other works, Clara Reeve’s critical study in dialogue form, The Progress of
    Romance, is interesting as one of the comparatively few analyses of the novel by a novelist in this period. Charlotte
    Dacre’s Zofloya, or the Moor (1806) takes the Gothic to new heights. It is a tale of love, lust and murder set in
    late fifteenth-century Venice. Polidori’s The Vampire and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are not purely Gothic in
    the true sense of the term.
    Gothic novels were so much popular that eminent writers started writing parodies of the Gothic form. Jane
    Austen’s first mature novel, Northanger Abbey sets out to take a critical but affectionate perspective on The
    Mysteries of Udolpho. Thomas Love Peacock also mocks the Gothic in Nightmare Abbey and Gryll Grange.

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