ROMANTIC AND GOTHIC PERIOD (1798-1832)

NOTE: THIS TITLE WAS GIVEN TO THE PERIOD LATER. ROMANTIC AUTHORS
DID NOT CALL THEMSELVES ‘ROMANTICS’, AS THEY ARE REFERRED TO
NOW

ROMANTICISM REFERS TO THE REVOLUTION IN LITERATURE AND ARTS

AGAINST THE DOMINANT RATIONALSISM AND CLASSICAL FORMALISM OF
THE ENLIGHTENMENT PERIOD. (P. 42)
CONTENT:

 Romantic Period:  Gothic period

 Romantic period VS Enlightenment  Historic context
 Key authors of Romantic poetry  Gothic architecture connected to literature
 Key Author: Jane Austen  Genre conventions
 Metonymy of gloom and horror
 Setting
 Archetypal characters
 Key texts
ROMANTIC PERIOD (1798-1832)
A COUNTERMOVEMENT TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT (P. 42)

Enlightenment Romantic Period

Back to the classics Revival in interest in Middle Ages
Reason, logic, order Emotions
Common sense The supernatural
Society The individual
The city Nature, rural life
Nobility, rich people Common folk (peasants, farmers),
children, innocence
Didactic novel: literature should be Literature should provide pleasure and
educational entertainment
ROMANTIC POETRY (P. 42-44)

 Willliam Blake (1757-1827) (p.43)

 Visionary poet, critiquing the “side effects of industrial civilization” (p.43)
 Work as combination of poems and etchings
 Famous work Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789-1794)
 Famous poem: The Tyger  vision on humanity and the world
ROMANTIC POETRY

 William Wordsworth (1770-1850) (p.44)

 Lyrical Ballads (1798) considered as first Romantic work
 Exploring God in everything, the beauty of the ordinary and nature.

 John Keats (1795 – 1821) (p.44)

 Wrote about sensations, the experience of beauty and the richness of life
 Believer of negative capability – transcending one’s self and speaking as and for other things or
beings
 “Ode to a Nightinggale” (1819)
KEY AUTHOR: JANE AUSTEN 1775 – 1817 (P. 47)
WORKS BY JANE AUSTEN (READER PAGE 47)
 Early novels characterised by playful comic irony
 Pride and Prejudice (1794/1813)
“It is a truth universally
 Sense and Sensibility (1798) acknowledged that a single
man in possession of a
 Northanger Abbey (1803) great fortune must be in
want of a wife.”

 Later novels are graver in tone, more expressive with regards to moral
judgement
 Mansfield Park (1814)
 Emma (1815)
 Persuasion (1816)
JANE AUSTEN – CHARACTERISTICS OF HER WORK

 Love, marriage
 Wit, humor
 Female protagonist
 Reflecting and satirizing society
 Good manners, sincerity, sense of duty are
important
 Vulgarity and stupidity are criticised.
JANE AUSTEN’S HEROINES

Expected behaviour of women at her time: meek, obedient, docile, soft, value beauty over
education, hide the learning they had, obey the will of their fathers and husbands.

Austen’s heroines all break with the conventions, yet all manage to find the man of their
dreams despite breaking the norm
 Elizabeth Bennet: too fortright
 Catherine Morland: too open
 Emma Woodhouse: In charge of her life and household, independent wealth
 Anne Elliot: being constant to her first love, instead of marrying well
 Fanny Price: not hunting for a husband
GOTHIC AS A SUBGENRE/PERIOD OF ROMANTIC
HISTORIC CONTEXT

• The words Goth and Gothic describe the Germanic tribes (e.g., Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths) which
sacked Rome and also ravaged the rest of Europe in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries.

• By the eighteenth century in England, Gothic had become synonymous with the Middle Ages, a period
which was in disfavor because it was perceived as chaotic, unenlightened, and superstitious.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 12TH – 16TH CENTURY

Gothic architecture used pointed arches and vaults, flying buttresses, narrow spires, stained glass
windows, intricate traceries, and varied details; its upward movement was meant to suggest
heavenward aspiration.
LITERARY CONNECTION TO GOTHIC
ARCHITECTURE

"gothic" came to describe a certain type of novels, so named because all these novels seem to take
place in Gothic-styled architecture -- mainly castles, mansions, and, of course, abbeys ("Gothic...").
GOTHIC CONVENTIONS

 Think of gothic clichés that you expect to be in a gothic story or novel, write these on
the board

 5 minutes
GOTHIC CONVENTIONS (P. 48)

 Damsel in distress (frequently faints in horror) Murder Death Suicide Ghosts Demons
 Secret corridors, passageways, or rooms

 Ancestral curses
Gloomy Family Dungeons Curses Torture
 Ruined castles with graveyards nearby settings secrets
 Priests and monks

 Sleep, dream, death-like states Vampires Spirits Castles Tombs Terror

METONYMY OF GLOOM AND HORROR (P. 48-49)

Metonymy is a subtype of metaphor, in which something (like rain) is used to stand for something
else (like sorrow).

For example, the film industry likes to use metonymy as a quick shorthand, so we often notice that it is
raining in funeral scenes.

 Thinking back to the conventions, how could these be used as metonymies?

NOTE THE FOLLOWING METONYMIES THAT SUGGEST MYSTERY, DANGER OR
THE SUPERNATURAL

wind, especially howling sighs, moans, howls, eerie sounds

rain, especially blowing clanking chains

doors grating on rusty hinges gusts of wind blowing out lights

footsteps approaching doors suddenly slamming shut

lights in abandoned rooms crazed laughter
characters trapped in a room baying of distant dogs (or
wolves?)
ruins of buildings thunder and lightning
IMPORTANCE OF SETTING

The setting is greatly influential in Gothic novels. It not only evokes the atmosphere
of horror and dread, but also portrays the deterioration of its world. The decaying,
ruined scenery implies that at one time there was a thriving world. At one time the
abbey, castle, or landscape was something treasured and appreciated. Now, all that lasts
is the decaying shell of a once thriving dwelling.
ARCHETYPAL CHARACTERS

 The Gothic hero becomes a sort of archetype as we find that there is a pattern to his
characterization.
 There is always the protagonist, usually isolated either voluntarily or involuntarily.
 Then there is the villain, who is the epitome of evil, either by his (usually a man) own
fall from grace, or by some implicit malevolence.
 The Wanderer, found in many Gothic tales, is the epitome of isolation as he wanders
the earth in perpetual exile, usually a form of divine punishment.
BASIC PLOT STRUCTURE FOR A GOTHIC NOVEL

 Action in the Gothic novel tends to take place at night, or at least in a claustrophobic,
sunless environment.
 ascent (up a mountain high staircase);
 descent (into a dungeon, cave, underground chambers or labyrinth) or falling off a
precipice; secret passage; hidden doors;
 the pursued maiden and the threat of rape or abduction;
 physical decay, skulls, cemeteries, and other images of death; ghosts; revenge;
family curse; blood and gore; torture; the Doppelganger (evil twin or double);
demonic possession; masking/shape-changing; black magic; madness;
incest and other broken sexual taboos.
 OTHER GOTHIC NOVELS

 1765: Horace Walpole. The Castle of Otranto

 1794: Ann Radcliffe. The Mysteries of Udolpho
 1794: William Godwin. Caleb Williams
 1796: Mathew Lewis. The Monk
 1798: Regina Maria Roche. Clermont
 1806: Ann Mary Hamilton. Montalva or Annals of Guilt
 1807: Charlotte Dacre. The Libertine
 1818: Mary Shelly. Frankenstein or the Modern
Prometheus
 1820: Charles Robert Maturin. Melmonth the Wanderer
 1826: Ann Radcliff: Gaston de Blondeville
 1826: William Child Green. The Abbot of Montserrat or the Pool of Blood
 KEY GOTHIC TEXTS

Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole Frankenstein –Mary Shelly

 1765  1818
 Both Gothic and romantic
 “first gothic story”
elements (pastoral scenes)