Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Gothic conventions
- crumbling castles,
labyrinths, low
lighting,
catacombs,
graveyards
- light and shadow:
reflecting the
characters of the
protagonists,
innocence v's darkness
and corruption
- ambiguity: between
good and evil, natural
and supernatural
- Polarities: virginal young female protagonist v's the corrupt,
inhumane male villain. Light and dark not only oppose but
compliment eachother: there is something about the dark,
sexually promiscuous male that hints at duality-an escape to
the dark side
- sexual difference:
power/experience
of the male,
virginal curiosity of
the female.
- Transgression
- breaking
boundaries: sexual,
social
- Contextually:
reaction against
intellectual
atmosphere of
the
Enlightenment
- WOMEN: gave them
a place to explore
rebellion
- feminist
interpretations: women
becoming sexually
libertaed, freeing
themselves from the
shackles of society.
- female/ gay male
authors- against the
grain of the patriachal
novel
- women= explorers, disobedient
- female
protagonist
and unsexed
male
- safely, without society
being turned on its head-
the thrill, but returning to
normality, ultimately
unthreatening.
- perversion, sexual
desire, obsession,
voyeurism, sexual
violence
- Claustrophobia and entrapment
- constraint:threat
and isolation,
physical or
psychological
- gothic novels set
during moments of
transition: from
girlhood to
womanhood,
enlightenment
period, autumn to
winter etc
- opposition but also
mysterious affinity
between present and
the archaic past
- Freud: The UNCANNY: " That class of
the frightening which leads back to
the old and unfamiliar"
- ex. Ghosts: disrupt the present with the past
- a world of doubt:
beyond human reason
and power
- Edmund Burke: The sublime
- Beyond the beautiful- no
order, harmony or
proportion- the mighty,
terrible and the awesome.
Excess and awe.
- 'a pleasing melancholy'
- Structural:
elaborate narrative
structure; many
narrators, found
texts and stories
within stories
- vicarious
pleasures, illicit
thrills
- typical symbolism
- colours, usually red v's white to
insinuate loss of virginity/purity
- mirrors: identity, sense of
self, vanity, worldliness,
sensuality, isolation, a door to
an alternate reality.
- light and dark: polarities
- passageways,
locked doors, keys:
sexual discover,
perhaps forbidden