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Romanticism and Gothic
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Romanticism and Gothic

Setting and characters

The Gothic novel

The sublime

English Romanticism

The Romanticism

In literature the romanticism became dominant. The romanticism affirmed a new sensibility: the supremacy of feeling and emotions against the faith in reason. There was a new sensibility based on introspection, nostalgia, emotionalism and individualism. The country is preferred to the industrial town, because the man is in relationship with nature.Another element typical was the revival of the past, opposed to the present reality. “Gothic vague” was called the rediscovery of the art, legends and popular tradition of the middle age.

The Romanticism

The Romantics -expressed a negative attitude towards the existing social or political conditions; -placed the individual at the centre of art; -argued that poetry should be free from all rules.

English romanticism coincides with the beginning of the nineteenth century, a moment of great transformation for England which, thanks to the industrial revolution, becomes the first world power, but is also crossed by internal social turmoil for the strengthening of the bourgeoisie and the formation of an urban proletariat in conditions of degradation. The clear separation that is created between the upper and lower classes favors a detachment of intellectuals from the world of the latter and from social issues, perceived as extraneous, if not for a vague regret of being close to nature and of rural simplicity and a generic exaltation of freedom.

English Romanticism

Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) THE SUBLIMEthe beautiful and the sublime as opposed

--No emotion is stronger than fear, not even pleasure. --Fear is the true source of the sublime. --The sublime is always founded on terror (the ‘ruling principle of the sublime’). --Whatever is visibly terrible is always sublime because it arouses a sense of danger and terror. --To make things even more terrible, two conditions are essential, obscurity and mystery.

the sublime

The Gothic novel was a reaction against the realism of 18th century writers, such as Fielding and Richardson. Since it aimed at thrilling the readers instead of amusing or educating them, its plots were set in an imaginary past time, usually the Middle Ages, and in strange, unfamiliar countries, with horrible murders, extraordinary situations and supernatural events happening in haunted castles, prisons, convents. The dominant mood was the so called “Gothic gloom”, enhanced by the presence of secret passages, long dark corridors and dreadful dungeons, or by the natural surroundings made up of thick forests and impenetrable woods.

the gothic novel

Sensitive heroes 🡪 they save heroines. Heroines 🡪 stricken by unreal terrors and persecuted by the villains. Satanic, terrifying male characters, victims of their negative impulses.

Ancient settings isolated castles and mysterious abbeys with hidden passages, underground cellars, secret rooms. Catholic countries as the setting for the most terrible crimes, due to Protestant prejudices against Catholicism.

setting and characters

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