Page 93 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

History of English Literature

Notes fictitious translator. When Walpole admitted to his authorship in the second edition, its originally
favourable reception by literary reviewers changed into rejection. The romance, usually held in
contempt by the educated as a tawdry and debased kind of writing, had only recently been made
respectable by the works of Richardson and Fielding. A romance with superstitious elements, and
moreover void of didactical intention, was considered a setback and not acceptable as a modern
production.

Notes Walpole’s forgery, together with the blend of history and fiction that was contravening
the principles of the Enlightenment, brought about the Gothic novel’s association
with fake documentation.

Clara Reeve

Clara Reeve, best known for her work The Old English Baron (1778), set out to take Walpole’s plot
and adapt it to the demands of the time by balancing fantastic elements with 18th century realism.
The question now arose whether supernatural events that were not as evidently absurd as Walpole’s
would not lead the simpler minds to believe them possible.

Ann Radcliffe
Ann Radcliffe developed the technique of the explained supernatural, in which every seemingly
supernatural intrusion is eventually traced back to natural causes. Radcliffe made the Gothic novel
socially acceptable. Her success attracted many imitators, mostly of low quality, which soon led to
a general perception of the genre as inferior, formulaic, and stereotypical. Among other elements,
Ann Radcliffe also introduced the brooding figure of the Gothic villain, which developed into the
Byronic hero. Radcliffe’s novels, above all The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), were best-sellers,
although along with all novels they were looked down upon by well-educated people as
sensationalist women’s entertainment, despite some men’s enjoyment of them.

Did u know? Radcliffe provided an aesthetic for the genre in an influential article “On the
Supernatural in Poetry”, examining the distinction and correlation between
horror and terror in Gothic fiction.

12.2 History of the Goths

The Goths, one of the many Germanic tribes, fought numerous battles with the Roman Empire for
centuries. According to their own myths, as recounted by Jordanes, a Gothic historian from the
mid 6th century, the Goths originated in what is now southern Sweden, but their king Berig led
them to the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. They finally separated into two groups, the Visigoths
(the West Goths) and Ostrogoths (the East Goths), so named because of where they eventually
settled. They reached the height of their power around 5th century A.D., when they sacked Rome
and captured Spain, but their history finally subsumed under that of the countries they conquered
(“Goths”).

Connection to the Gothic Novel

Centuries passed before the word “gothic” meant anything else again. During the Renaissance,
Europeans rediscovered Greco-Roman culture and began to regard a particular type of architecture,
mainly those built during the Middle Ages, as “gothic” — not because of any connection to the
Goths, but because the ‘Uomo Universale’ considered these buildings barbaric and definitely not
in that Classical style they so admired. Centuries more passed before “gothic” came to describe a
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