The Romantic Age: Topic 2: Overview

The Gothic begins with later-eighteenth-century writers' turn to the past; in the context of the Romantic period, the Gothic is, then, a type of imitation medievalism. When it was launched in the later eighteenth century, The Gothic featured accounts of terrifying experiences in ancient castles — experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and the rest. By extension, it came to designate the macabre, mysterious, fantastic, supernatural, and, again, the terrifying, especially the pleasurably terrifying, in literature more generally. Closer to the present, one sees the Gothic pervading Victorian literature (for example, in the novels of Dickens and the Brontës), American fiction (from Poe and Hawthorne through Faulkner), and of course the films, television, and videos of our own (in this respect, not-so-modern) culture. My own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial.

Resources for the Study of Gothic Literature The "Author List" of Jack Voller's provides on-line access to the growing number of Gothic titles available on the internet and a fascinating exercise in canon formation. "Overviews, Directories, and Collections" of : a secondary bibliography of Gothic scholarship, maintained by Professor Carol Davison of the "Annotated Bibliography" of ( UVa ) A wonderful e-version of the UVa Library exhibition that draws from the Sadlier -Black collection, the primary repository of "first Gothics ." "What is the Gothic?" The International Gothic Association A Glossary of Literary Gothic Terms (some of the following texts come from a very useful introduction to and overview of Gothic literature, prepared by graduate students in a course taught by Jerome McGann and Patricia Meyer Spacks of the .) A. 1. selections from Edmund Burke's {*style:<i>A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1759) </i>*} 2. 3. from Ann Radcliffe's "On the Supernatural in Poetry B. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Courses | English | Helen Way Klingler College of Arts and Sciences Columbia , 1979. Masse, Michelle. In the Name of Love. : Cornell, 1992. Modleski, Tania. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women. : Shoestring, 1982. Moers, Ellen. Women's Press, 1978. Poovey, Mary. Criticism 21 (1979), 307‑30. Radway, Janice. Popular Literature. : , 1984. Restuccia, Frances L. .'" Thompson, G. Thurston, Carol. Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity. : 1987. Notes on Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market": the poem's multiple heroines represent alternative possibilities of selfhood for women, poem as sexual/religious allegory: "rape"of a lock of her hair causes Laura to lose her virginity; once that is lost she is valueless Lizzie (like Christ) intervenes offering a womanly holy Communion; she changes her sister from a lost whore to a virginal bride poem presents a world where men hurt and women redeem poem posits a matriarchal world and more covertly, a lesbian world girls eventually find redemption in the heaven of bourgeois domesticity David F. 1. 2.

Gothic-tradition resources: Overviews, Directories, & Collections indicates a link that opens a new browser window ] Sublime Anxiety: The Gothic Family and the Outsider Special exhibit at the U of Virginia, focusing on early Gothic works and their treatments/modulations of family and hero-as-outsider; special sections include Women and the Gothic, the Brontës, The Vampire, and more. Romanticism on the Net Although not specifically concerned with the Gothic or supernaturalist traditions, this online peer-reviewed journal of Romantics studies publishes material on a number of authors and topics relevant to those traditions. Victorian Web Created by George P. Romantic Circles Another Romanticism-specific site that provides high-quality coverage of the period in which the Gothic (and the post-Gothic) took form. The Gothic: Materials for Study An outstanding introduction to and overview of Gothic literature, prepared by graduate students in a course taught by Jerome McGann and Patricia Meyer Spacks. Gothic Literature: What the Romantic Writers Read The Sickly Taper

Victorian Gothic fin de siecle literature homepage a short introduction The Gothic genre gained prominence in Britain in the late 18th century. Fog, smoke, decrepit mansions, insanity (usually afflicting a young heroine), sexuality, incest, and mystery are just some of the general characteristics of the Gothic literary tradition. lc subject headings and browsing areas TPR461 and PR830s are where most of the anthologies and books related to Victorian literature, and Gothic literature, are located.

The Victorian Web: An Overview Glossary of Literary Gothic Terms A Glossary of Literary Gothic Terms ancestral curse . . . anti-Catholicism . . . body-snatching . . . cemetery . . . claustrophobia . . . gothic counterfeit . . . devil . . . dreaming/nightmares . . . entrapment . . . explained supernatural . . . exorcism . . . female gothic . . . ghost . . . grotesque . . . haunted house incubus . . . necromancy . . . necrophilia . . . parody . . . possession . . . pursued protagonist . . . pursued heroine . . . revenant . . . revenge . . . dark romanticism . . . sadism sensibility . . . somnambulism . . . spiritualism . . . sublime . . . succubus . . . supernatural gadgetry . . . superstition . . . . . . transformation . . . unreliable narrator . . . vampire . . . villain-hero . . . visigothic . . . wandering jew . . . werewolf . . . witches and witchcraft (Info on this page and how to contribute to it) Evil, misfortune, or harm that comes as a response to or retribution for deeds or misdeeds committed against or by one's ancestor(s). --Kala Aaron --T.