Defining the Gothic
August 18, 2015 12:59 PM Subscribe
"So for my overarching statement I will say that in a Gothic, every single aspect of the text—language, plot, setting, characterization—is in service to the mood. And that mood is creepy."
Because I've been watching a lot of documentaries, BBC Four's The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3.
posted by sukeban at 2:02 PM on August 18, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by sukeban at 2:02 PM on August 18, 2015 [6 favorites]
We're talking Sunset Boulevard in FanFare and this article came up about examples of New American Gothic
posted by The Whelk at 2:04 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 2:04 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
Reading further along in the comments from the link, one of Curtis's readers says that she's always thought of noir as the male version of gothic. Another comment elaborates that the creepy is an existential dread.
Steven Bruhm explicitly says that gothic has always been queer. I'm not queer myself, so I'm reluctant to put forth a theory that gothic is queer in large part because of that sense of existential dread shared by reluctant heroines and under-the-radar LGBTQ folks, and I definitely don't have access to the primary sources to back up such an assertion... but the idea by itself makes a kind of sense, doesn't it?
posted by infinitewindow at 2:24 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
Steven Bruhm explicitly says that gothic has always been queer. I'm not queer myself, so I'm reluctant to put forth a theory that gothic is queer in large part because of that sense of existential dread shared by reluctant heroines and under-the-radar LGBTQ folks, and I definitely don't have access to the primary sources to back up such an assertion... but the idea by itself makes a kind of sense, doesn't it?
posted by infinitewindow at 2:24 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
"The one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim. And of course, the more completely and unifiedly a story conveys this atmosphere, the better it is as a work of art in the given medium."
Supernatural Horror in Literature, H.P. Lovecraft
posted by howfar at 3:02 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
Supernatural Horror in Literature, H.P. Lovecraft
posted by howfar at 3:02 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
For the last few years I've been wandering though Gothic Fiction. Some of it is really stupid: "The Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole, often considered to be the first gothic tale, is not worth your time. "The Monk" by Matthew Lewis- with sadistic monks, hidden passageways, skeletons, etc., is the sort of thing that gives Gothic fiction a bad name. However, there are wonderful books you may not be familiar with: "Uncle Silas" by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, "Melmoth the Wanderer" by Charles Maturin, and most especially "The Mysteries of New Orleans" by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein, a type of Gothic called "urban gothic". I recommend you read it- it is wonderful.
posted by acrasis at 3:24 PM on August 18, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by acrasis at 3:24 PM on August 18, 2015 [7 favorites]
For the last few years I've been wandering though Gothic Fiction. Some of it is really stupid: "The Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole, often considered to be the first gothic tale, is not worth your time. "The Monk" by Matthew Lewis- with sadistic monks, hidden passageways, skeletons, etc., is the sort of thing that gives Gothic fiction a bad name.
INCORRECT. The Castle of Otranto is amazing. And the Monk is hilarious and fantastic. Uncle Silas is good; Le Fanu has great prose and page-by-page fun but his books and stories are generally a little disappointing. I also liked Wylder's Hand, and I'm looking forward to The Rose and the Key. Can't wait for Melmoth.
The gothic, I agree with the author here, is about tension and fear. There is a threat, but you're not sure what the threat is. Is it this guy? Is it the guy you've never seen? Is it the house itself, creaking and huge? Is it that rumor mentioned obliquely by the footman? You're not sure, and neither is the protagonist, who is usually a bit skeptical and naive. They just keep on truckin' and you're thinking for the love of god get out of there! Managing that tension is a hard thing to do — easy to give away too much (reader bored) or too little (reader mystified).
Bring on more gothic! Who has recommendations?
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:40 PM on August 18, 2015 [9 favorites]
INCORRECT. The Castle of Otranto is amazing. And the Monk is hilarious and fantastic. Uncle Silas is good; Le Fanu has great prose and page-by-page fun but his books and stories are generally a little disappointing. I also liked Wylder's Hand, and I'm looking forward to The Rose and the Key. Can't wait for Melmoth.
The gothic, I agree with the author here, is about tension and fear. There is a threat, but you're not sure what the threat is. Is it this guy? Is it the guy you've never seen? Is it the house itself, creaking and huge? Is it that rumor mentioned obliquely by the footman? You're not sure, and neither is the protagonist, who is usually a bit skeptical and naive. They just keep on truckin' and you're thinking for the love of god get out of there! Managing that tension is a hard thing to do — easy to give away too much (reader bored) or too little (reader mystified).
Bring on more gothic! Who has recommendations?
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:40 PM on August 18, 2015 [9 favorites]
I've always found dread to be the key to unlocking the Gothic.
You know exactly what awaits in that crumbling Victorian manor, or that abandoned seaside village ('Does everyone here smell of fish?') but... you just gotta find out. For yourself. So, yeah, Kierkegaardian dread-- wanting what we fear and fearing what we want.
Denis Johnson's Already Dead has always struck me as deeply Gothic, just transplanted to Northern Cal.
posted by mrdaneri at 3:53 PM on August 18, 2015
You know exactly what awaits in that crumbling Victorian manor, or that abandoned seaside village ('Does everyone here smell of fish?') but... you just gotta find out. For yourself. So, yeah, Kierkegaardian dread-- wanting what we fear and fearing what we want.
Denis Johnson's Already Dead has always struck me as deeply Gothic, just transplanted to Northern Cal.
posted by mrdaneri at 3:53 PM on August 18, 2015
>INCORRECT. The Castle of Otranto is amazing.
Well, amazing for a book where someone is crushed by a giant hat.
posted by acrasis at 3:54 PM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]
Well, amazing for a book where someone is crushed by a giant hat.
posted by acrasis at 3:54 PM on August 18, 2015 [3 favorites]
Well, amazing for a book where someone is crushed by a giant hat.
This... this... Is a tautology, right? I mean, when I look up "amazing" in the dictionary, definition 3 is "a book where someone is crushed by a giant hat."
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:58 PM on August 18, 2015 [14 favorites]
This... this... Is a tautology, right? I mean, when I look up "amazing" in the dictionary, definition 3 is "a book where someone is crushed by a giant hat."
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:58 PM on August 18, 2015 [14 favorites]
For the last few years I've been wandering though Gothic Fiction. Some of it is really stupid: "The Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole, often considered to be the first gothic tale, is not worth your time. "The Monk" by Matthew Lewis- with sadistic monks, hidden passageways, skeletons, etc., is the sort of thing that gives Gothic fiction a bad name.
Otranto, like Beckford's Vathek, is as much high-camp humor as it is straight-up chills (if you want Walpole in what we would now consider more traditionally Gothic mode, try his drama The Mysterious Mother). The Monk is way over-the-top, I admit, but it's supposed to be: Lewis is trying to emulate the German mode in Gothic, all blood-and-guts (or, rather, sturm und drang) with lots of supernatural elements. As opposed to Ann Radcliffe's so-called "rational Gothic" (that is, all the scares/atmosphere turn out to have non-supernatural explanations).
Bring on more gothic! Who has recommendations?
Er, well, I'll try not to drop my 19th-c. Gothic syllabi on you in their entirety :), but some suggestions. Bear in mind that I specialize in British fiction:
Gottfried Burger's poem "Lenore," which you can find in multiple translations on the 'net (1 2 3). Hugely influential. As I warn my students, once you read this poem, you will see the plot everywhere.
John Polidori, "The Vampyre." Responsible for the Byronic vampire (not surprisingly, as Polidori probably based his vampire on Byron).
James Hogg, Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Our hero makes a deal with the devil. Maybe.
Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor. Scott attempts to meld historical fiction with the Gothic (and rather a lot of Macbeth, if you're paying attention).
By the Victorian period, Gothic hits its stride as a short-story form (insert long lecture on changes in publishing practices that enable this). It's worth remembering that almost everyone who's anyone in 19th-c. fiction has a go at the Gothic. The Gaslight archive features a number of the most prominent authors, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell (best known as a realist novelist, but she published quite a bit of Gothic), and the aforementioned Le Fanu. Another important Gothic author not listed there is Charlotte Riddell. Late in the century, there is of course M. R. James.
Some publishers to search: Valancourt, which began by reprinting early Gothic and has since branched out to more recent material, and Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural, which has all sorts of interesting stuff in its listings.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:11 PM on August 18, 2015 [13 favorites]
Otranto, like Beckford's Vathek, is as much high-camp humor as it is straight-up chills (if you want Walpole in what we would now consider more traditionally Gothic mode, try his drama The Mysterious Mother). The Monk is way over-the-top, I admit, but it's supposed to be: Lewis is trying to emulate the German mode in Gothic, all blood-and-guts (or, rather, sturm und drang) with lots of supernatural elements. As opposed to Ann Radcliffe's so-called "rational Gothic" (that is, all the scares/atmosphere turn out to have non-supernatural explanations).
Bring on more gothic! Who has recommendations?
Er, well, I'll try not to drop my 19th-c. Gothic syllabi on you in their entirety :), but some suggestions. Bear in mind that I specialize in British fiction:
Gottfried Burger's poem "Lenore," which you can find in multiple translations on the 'net (1 2 3). Hugely influential. As I warn my students, once you read this poem, you will see the plot everywhere.
John Polidori, "The Vampyre." Responsible for the Byronic vampire (not surprisingly, as Polidori probably based his vampire on Byron).
James Hogg, Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Our hero makes a deal with the devil. Maybe.
Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor. Scott attempts to meld historical fiction with the Gothic (and rather a lot of Macbeth, if you're paying attention).
By the Victorian period, Gothic hits its stride as a short-story form (insert long lecture on changes in publishing practices that enable this). It's worth remembering that almost everyone who's anyone in 19th-c. fiction has a go at the Gothic. The Gaslight archive features a number of the most prominent authors, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell (best known as a realist novelist, but she published quite a bit of Gothic), and the aforementioned Le Fanu. Another important Gothic author not listed there is Charlotte Riddell. Late in the century, there is of course M. R. James.
Some publishers to search: Valancourt, which began by reprinting early Gothic and has since branched out to more recent material, and Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural, which has all sorts of interesting stuff in its listings.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:11 PM on August 18, 2015 [13 favorites]
Speaking of Defining the Gothic, there is a little problem that I find annoying...
"New England Gothic" is the term that I would use to describe the Gothic elements of the literature of Poe, Hawthorne, and Lovecraft; that unsettled sense of being not quite comfortable with the mysteries of the recently colonized new world.
According to Wikipedia, this genre is supposed to be called "Dark Romanticism". I would disagree with the semantics. I guess I could complain to the editors of Wikipedia...
Well, at least they've got Southern Ontario Gothic covered: The genre has been criticised as having "little or nothing to distinguish it from everyday, garden-variety type realism."
posted by ovvl at 5:45 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
"New England Gothic" is the term that I would use to describe the Gothic elements of the literature of Poe, Hawthorne, and Lovecraft; that unsettled sense of being not quite comfortable with the mysteries of the recently colonized new world.
According to Wikipedia, this genre is supposed to be called "Dark Romanticism". I would disagree with the semantics. I guess I could complain to the editors of Wikipedia...
Well, at least they've got Southern Ontario Gothic covered: The genre has been criticised as having "little or nothing to distinguish it from everyday, garden-variety type realism."
posted by ovvl at 5:45 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
acrasis: "Well, amazing for a book where someone is crushed by a giant hat."
Wait. You say that like it's a *bad* thing!
posted by dejah420 at 5:59 PM on August 18, 2015
Wait. You say that like it's a *bad* thing!
posted by dejah420 at 5:59 PM on August 18, 2015
For a loving mockery of Gothic, there's always Northanger Abbey - one of my favorites of the Austens. It also has some amazingly sly, sardonic things to say about the enthusiastic nothings that girls say to each other, and the tendency for us to judge as smart that which is influenced by us.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:37 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Deoridhe at 6:37 PM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
Favoriting the whole thread while Dark Shadows marathons in the background.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:06 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:06 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
The Bride of Lammermoor was the first novel Queen Victoria ever read, right after she was crowned.
posted by mmmbacon at 5:40 AM on August 19, 2015
posted by mmmbacon at 5:40 AM on August 19, 2015
Bring on more gothic! Who has recommendations?
You don't get to call yourself a goth in the Continent unless you've at least heard of Les Chants de Maldoror (several trigger warnings would apply since Lautréamont/ Ducasse was being a terrible enfant terrible). From the French you also have Baudelaire, Rimbaud and the rest. Goethe and ETA Hoffman would be the obvious choices for German lit, and further East there's Meyrink.
As for Spain, I'm partial to Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and his Rimas y Leyendas. One small taste is this English translation of El Monte de las Ánimas.
posted by sukeban at 6:38 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
You don't get to call yourself a goth in the Continent unless you've at least heard of Les Chants de Maldoror (several trigger warnings would apply since Lautréamont/ Ducasse was being a terrible enfant terrible). From the French you also have Baudelaire, Rimbaud and the rest. Goethe and ETA Hoffman would be the obvious choices for German lit, and further East there's Meyrink.
As for Spain, I'm partial to Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and his Rimas y Leyendas. One small taste is this English translation of El Monte de las Ánimas.
posted by sukeban at 6:38 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
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John G. Parks proposed that the hallmark of the New American Gothic (new thirty years ago, anyway) was the narcissism of its main characters. That rings true to me; we've all experienced the uncanny grief and confusion when someone we thought we knew turns out to be someone wholly unlike that perception, and no one is more different from other's perceptions of themselves than the narcissist.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:34 PM on August 18, 2015 [5 favorites]