Gothic History Online
The first chapter of
Fred Botting's Gothic begins with a description of
Gothic as anchored in the written word: "Gothic signifies a writing
of excess. It appears in the awful obscurity that haunted
eighteenth-century rationality and morality. It shadows the
despairing ecstasies of Romantic idealism and individualism and the
uncanny dualities of Victorian realism and decadence" [Botting, Fred,
Gothic,
New York: Routledge, 2007,p. 1]. It
goes beyond the civility of proper British society "stiff upper lip"
cliché and evokes actual passion. Gothic is also historically
characterized as an art form of transgressions. Botting shows that
early Gothic novels warned against moral and social transgressions
that could lead to retribution and the danger of losing civility.
The Gothic also seems to lend itself to what Botting describes as
diffusion. By that he implies that the essence of Gothic approaches
stereotypes at its worst and archetypes at its best. Gothic writings
over the centuries survive through repetition of theme,
character
type, and setting. It is as if The Castle of Otranto crystallized
the primordial stage upon which every other Gothic story would later
play.
Jerrold E. Hogle characterizes
Gothic writing as a kind of stasis of opposites: In the 17th Century, Gothic and politics were beginning
to be viewed as related. It was surmised at the time that civilized forms of
government and legal systems were introduced by the northern Germanic people
who preceded the Romans. This view of Gothic as a
positive influence
continued through the 18th Century where it was eventually contrasted with
the hedonism of Roman Catholicism, especially after the Reformation. In
England, at least, the line was drawn between Germanic Protestant standards
of freedom and Roman Catholic rituals and superstitions. So early Gothic
literature suggested a nostalgia for a pristine past while simultaneously
wallowing in the hauntings and supernatural events that originated in
Catholic ritual. Gothic also came to signify abuses by political
authorities. The word was becoming a kind of political football changing
meaning according to the particular politics. "In the contest for the
meaning of 'Gothic' more than a single word was at stake. At issue were the
differently constructed and valued meanings of the Enlightenment, culture,
nation and government as well as contingent, but no less contentious,
significances of the family, nature, individuality and representation" [Bottings,
Gothic, pp. 42-43]. Labyrinths and hidden passage ways became a staple of the
Gothic setting early on...and are to this day featured in novels and movies
of the same genre. These twists and convolutions later became
associated with deceit, corruption, and superstition. In the 18th Century,
the Gothic and its labyrinthine stories alluded to the dangers of the French
Revolution spilling into civilized British society. "Linked to novels that
raise the contaminating spectre of democracy and excite readers with a
'Gallic frenzy' that simultaneously upsets proper national and sexual
identifications, the labyrinth is also associated with confusion, deception
and 'superstitious corruption'" [Botting, Gothic, p. 83]. This view of Gothic is related to Edmund Burke's ideas in
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burke's use of the
term Gothic is linked to the evolution of Whig philosophy according to
Botting: "In this context Gothic signified the northern European tribes,
admired for their love of freedom and democratic institutions" [Gothic,
p.88]. Bottings argues that Burke's language discourages radical actions in
favor of democracy and political equality as a way of avoiding what was
happening in France. Robert Miles points out that this view of Gothic was
actually around long before the French Revolution: "Prior to the French
Revolution, for any of those subscribing to Whiggism in its many varieties,
'Gothic' possessed a positive rather than negative political valence. It was
a common belief among Whigs and radicals alike that the English Parliament
traced its origins to an ancient, or Gothic, constitution brought to England
by the Saxons" [Robert Miles, "The 1790s: The Effulgence of Gothic,"
The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2007, p. 48]. But there was a counter view to Burke's that used the
Gothic to represent instead "everything that was old-fashioned, barbaric,
feudal and irrationally ungrounded" [Gothic, p.88]. Botting
explains that Thomas Paine, in his own The Rights of Man,
criticized Burke's lamenting the passing of Gothic times as
fantasy unduly
praising oppressive political customs and institutions. Mary Wollstonecraft
also criticizes Burke in her own A Vindication of the Rights of Men
(1790): "Man preys on man; and you mourn for the idle tapestry that
decorated a gothic pile, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest
to prayer" [Gothic, p. 88]. And Botting concludes that NOTE TO STUDENTS AND TUTORS: Teachigo.com provides
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matches their requirements.No other form of writing or theatre is as
insistent as Gothic on juxtaposing potential revolution and possible
reaction--about gender, sexuality, race, class, the colonizers versus the
colonized, the physical versus the metaphysical, and abnormal versus normal
psychology--and leaving both extremes sharply before us and far less
resolved than the conventional endings in most of these works claim them to
be. In this respect, ...writing, theatre, and films of this kind enact and
reflect the most intense and important ambivalences in modern western
culture, if only in a distortion mirror that ostensibly places these
quandaries long ago or far away from us [Hogle, Jerrold E., Editor,
The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 13-14].
The continuing ambivalence and polarisation of
the word Gothic until the end of the eighteenth century was significant not
only in the changes of meaning that it underwent but in its function in a
network of associations whose positive or negative value depended on the
political positions and representations with which Gothic figures were
associated [Gothic, p.89].