Key Features of the GOTHIC

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Settings - Sinister, gloomy medieval settings - castles, dungeons, gaols, churches/yards, secret passages, winding stairsand haunted buildings
Extreme landscapes - exotic/foreign settings sometimes from the past, rugged mountains, thick forests, storms, thunder and lightning. See the ‘Sublime’
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Repression - self becomes ‘other’ to commit repressed desires [abjection and the doppelganger, or as in Macbeth, he becomes the monster, ‘To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself" II: 2]. The monster [etymology: ‘monstrum’ = portent or
Transgression - class, gender and moral boundaries are crossed. Often gothic literature blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy.
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Monster/Satanic Hero/Fallen Man - a courageous search for forbidden knowledge or power always leads the hero to a fall, a corruption, or destruction. Consequently, the hero in Gothic literature is often a "villain." The hero is isolated fro
Doppelganger - a second self which often haunts and threatens the rational psyche of the victim to whom they become attached. It involves a comparison between two characters representing opposing forces in human nature, for example, the ba
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The Female Gothic often aims to socialize and educate its female readers and is usually morally conservative. Yet the Female Gothic can also express criticism of patriarchal, male-dominated structures and serve as an expression of female i
The presence and absence of women: we have either the binary oppositions of the female gothic monster [anxieties on female power] or the marginalised, passive victim [female gothic]. Victor Frankenstein usurps the power of gendered Nature
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The Sublime - Edmund Burke locates the sublime purely in terms of fear, the source of which is death or a sense of possible danger. The threat must not be direct; else "delight" (a lesser form of literary "pleasure") cannot be experienced
Freud’s Uncanny - according to Freud, we find things to be uncanny (unheimlich) when they are familiar to us (heimlich or “belonging to the home") yet also somehow foreign or disturbing. Uncanny feelings can arise when something seemingly i
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The Pursued Protagonist - refers to the idea of a pursuing force that relentlessly acts in a severely negative manner on a character. This persecution often implies the notion of some sort of a curse or other form of terminal and utterly u
Pursuit of the Heroine - the pursuit of a virtuous and idealistic (and usually poetically inclined) young woman by a villain normally portrayed as a wicked, older and/or aristocratic. This pursuit represents a threat to the young lady's ide
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Multiple Narrative/Spiral Narrative Method - the story is frequently told through a series of secret manuscripts or multiple tales, each revealing a deeper secret, so the narrative gradually spirals inward toward the hidden truth. The narra
Style - gothic literature tends towards the sensational. It is introspective with psychological connotations and has overtones of the savage or barbarous. Often the symbolism of light and darkness is employed.
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Terror vs. Horror - works of terror create a sense of uncertainty (see the Sublime). The essence of terror stimulates the imagination and often challenges reasoning to arrive at a somewhat plausible explanation of ambiguous fears and anxie
Dreams/Visions - terrible truths are often revealed to characters through dreams or visions. The hidden knowledge of the universe and of human nature emerges through dreams because when the person sleeps, reason sleeps, and the supernatural
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Card 2

Front

Transgression - class, gender and moral boundaries are crossed. Often gothic literature blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy.

Back

Repression - self becomes ‘other’ to commit repressed desires [abjection and the doppelganger, or as in Macbeth, he becomes the monster, ‘To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself" II: 2]. The monster [etymology: ‘monstrum’ = portent or

Card 3

Front

Doppelganger - a second self which often haunts and threatens the rational psyche of the victim to whom they become attached. It involves a comparison between two characters representing opposing forces in human nature, for example, the ba

Back

Preview of the back of card 3

Card 4

Front

The presence and absence of women: we have either the binary oppositions of the female gothic monster [anxieties on female power] or the marginalised, passive victim [female gothic]. Victor Frankenstein usurps the power of gendered Nature

Back

Preview of the back of card 4

Card 5

Front

Freud’s Uncanny - according to Freud, we find things to be uncanny (unheimlich) when they are familiar to us (heimlich or “belonging to the home") yet also somehow foreign or disturbing. Uncanny feelings can arise when something seemingly i

Back

Preview of the back of card 5
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