EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE:

NOVELS & GOTHIC ROMANCES

I. General Context. The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an
intellectual and cultural movement that emerged in 17th- and 18th-
century Europe. It emphasized reason, science, individual rights,
and scepticism of traditional authority, particularly the
monarchy and the Church. Thinkers such as John Locke, Voltaire,
Montesquieu, and Rousseau challenged old ideas and laid the
foundations for modern democracy, human rights, and scientific
progress. The Enlightenment played a crucial role in shaping
revolutions, such as the American and French Revolutions, and
influencing modern political and social thought.
Main Characteristics of the Enlightenment
Reason and Rationalism – Emphasis on logic, critical thinking, and
scientific inquiry over superstition and tradition.1

Empiricism and Scientific Method – Advocacy for observation,

experimentation, and evidence-based conclusions.
Individual Rights and Liberties – Promotion of freedom, equality,
and human dignity, influencing later democratic ideals.
Secularism – Separation of religion from politics and the increasing
role of secular institutions in governance.
Political and Social Criticism – Challenges to absolute monarchy,
feudalism, and religious dogma, advocating for democracy and
constitutional government.

1 This decisive intellectual turn involved the change of the key question thinkers asked concerning reality.
The key pre-modern question was ‘what’? (What is this or that?); the modern question is ‘How?’ (How
does this or that work?). Let us take the example. Traditionally, theologians and philosophers answered
the question ‘what is the human being?’ by saying that it was a creature that possessed an eternal soul
given to him or her by God. The essence of human beings was their soul. Modern philosophers and
scientists might personally believe that they had received a soul from God and be much concerned about
its salvation but, as enlightened thinkers, they were not concerned with this. They knew all too well that if
they attempted to answer this question, they would transgress the boundaries of rational knowledge.
Rather than trying to explain the essence of the human creature, what they did was to explain how the
human body and mind work. John Locke’s theory of the association of ideas is an attempt at explaining
the mechanisms of our mind. The first chapter of Lawrence Sterne’s marvelous novel Tristram Shandy
mocks this theory. 2 This faith in the capacity of reason has led some people to think that the
Enlightenment was fully optimistic. It was certainly optimistic, but you should not forget its sceptic side.
Not only the men (for they were mostly men) of the Enlightenment were highly aware of the limits of
reason and of the dangers of against crossing them; some of them, like Voltaire, had a rather dark view of
human history. Moreover, they realized that reason could be used by individuals to justify their egoistic
intentions and actions. This is very important to understand the novel of the Augustan period and the
importance that satire achieves in the eighteenth century, which has also been called the Age of Satire.
1
Progress and Optimism – Belief that human societies could
improve through education, reform, and knowledge.2

Freedom of Speech and Press – Support for open discussion,

debate, and the exchange of ideas without censorship.
Influence on Revolutions – Inspired movements like the American
Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789), advocating for
rights-based governance.
In literature – and the arts in general – the movement known as
Neoclassicism came to embody the rationality, order, and clarity
championed by the Enlightenment. Writers often drew inspiration
from classical antiquity to promote ideals of virtue, civic duty, and
reason.

II. General Context. History and the Political Sphere in Britain

This period begins and ends with two revolutions that affected the
national and the international order: The Glorious Revolution (1688)
and the French Revolution (1789). As you can see, the period does
not exactly coincide with the Eighteenth century. When reading
about the first part of the period you will come across the expression
‘the Augustan period’. This was the time of peace in Europe between
1714 (date of the Peace of Utrecht that put an end to the war of
succession in Spain)2 and 1756 when the Seven Years War (1756 -
1763) began. Although this was a period of peace in Europe, in
Britain there were the Jacobite wars between 1688 and 1746. These
sporadic wars were fought between the supporters of the old and the
young Pretender (successors of the deposed James II, of the Stewart
House), on the one hand, and the English new Royal House (the
House of Hannover), on the other.3 Famous battles were the Battle of
Haughs of Cromdale (1 May 1690), the Battle de Culloden (1746), in
Scotland;4 and the Battle of Boyne (1 July 1690), in Ireland. It is
important to bear in mind that these battles were followed by violent
repression in those parts of the British Isles in which they took place.
Three are the main transformations during this period:

2 Spain, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Savoy and the Dutch Republic, were
involved in this European conflict. One of the consequences of the Utrecht
treatises, was that Gibraltar became part of the UK.
3 The first King and Queen of this new dynasty were William of Orange (king 1689-
1702) and Mary (daughter of the deposed James II!).
4 Remember that the Stewards were originally Scottish.
2
 ➢ The Agricultural Revolution. In his Gulliver’s Travels,
Jonathan Swift mocks some of the experiments in agricultural
technology that were carried out at the time, but the
eighteenth-century agricultural revolution in England was a
very serious thing: it highly increased production and prepared
the way for the first industrial revolution in the world that
began in England towards the end of eighteenth century.
➢ Trade and improvement of communications were
intimately related with the agricultural revolution: the increase
of production promoted a correlative increase of exchanges
and this demanded the improvement of communications to
make such exchange possible.
➢ There were more and bigger towns, and the conditions of the
living in them improved. Town culture was an essential
condition for the production of literature and their newspapers
and clubs were key elements in the emergence of the public
sphere.

II. The Production of Literature and Culture: Material

Conditions
The growth of a city-based middle-class with economic power, and
the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the Agrarian
Revolution influenced the social and cultural context of the time. This
new social group, the bourgeoisie, wanted to participate actively in
the social and political debates of the times. Men attended the coffee
houses where they read journals, and women retired to their
boudoirs where they also read privately and in groups. This
influential social group demanded new forms of entertainment for
themselves and for their wives and daughters, which fuelled the rise
of the novel as a new genre in the period.
Literacy (the capacity to read and write) continues spreading during
this period,5 and this provides new readers for newspapers and
literary works (particularly, novels). Books were expensive, and most
people could not afford them. However, the existence of circulating
libraries made it possible for many people to read novels because
they could borrow a volume from them for a reasonable price. The
pubs were also very important because there the newspapers were
read and debated. Importantly, this period was also marked by the
end of patronage by noblemen.6 Writers now had to earn their
own living, and writing was one of the means to do this. Literature

5 Remember the importance of the Protestant obligation to read the Bible.

6 Patronage: 2. a. The action of a patron in using money or influence to advance the interests of a person,
cause, art, etc. Remember the importance of patronage, for example, in the Elizabethan period,
particularly in the theatrical sphere.
3
became a trade and, as a consequence, writers had to respond to the
tastes of their new readership, no longer to those of their patron.
In short, and as explained in Section III.3.1, the material production
of literature in the period was marked by the following factors:

➢ Greater levels of alphabetisation

➢ The emergence of newspapers
➢ The proliferation of circulating libraries
➢ The introduction of serial publications
➢ The decline of theatre

III. Literature in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century: The

Rise of the Novel
As outlined in the PDF titled “Unit 5 – Outline”, the literature of the
first half of the eighteenth century was extremely varied, including
contributions within, amongst others, the following genres: 1) essay
writing; 2) satire – satire was, in fact, so important at the time that
the eighteenth century is sometimes referred to as “the Age of
Satire”; 3) journalist essays; 4) travel books; 5) poetry in a
Neoclassical vein. This notwithstanding, one of the most crucial
developments in the period was the rise of the novel and this is why
this Unit is mostly focused on addressing the factors that led to the
development of this genre.
Notice that, up to this point, we have not studied any novels, and this
is basically because within the English literary tradition, the novel,
as a genre, emerged in the eighteenth century. Below is a list of the
“fathers” and “mothers” of the novel:

“Fathers of the Novel”

➢ Daniel Defoe: The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of

Robinson Crusoe (1719); Captain Singleton (1720); Moll
Flanders (1722); Roxana (1724)

➢ Samuel Richardson: Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740);

Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady (1747-1748)

➢ Henry Fielding: Shamela (1741), Joseph Andrews (1742), Jonathan

Wild (1743), The History of Tom Jones, A Founding (1749)

4
 ➢ Laurence Sterne: Tristam Shandy (1759-1767)

“Mothers of the Novel”

➢ Aphra Behn, Love Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister

(1684-87); Oronooko, or the Royal Slave (1688)

➢ Delarivier Manley, The Secret History of Queen Zarah and

the Zarazians (1705); The New Atalantis (1709)

➢ Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess (1720); The History of Miss

Betsy Thoughtless (1751)

➢ Sarah Fielding, The Adventures of David Simple (1744), The

Governess (1749)

➢ Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote, or the Adventures of

Arabella (1752)

III.1. Origin and Problems of Definition

Many critics have exposed the difficulty of defining the “novel” as a
literary form:

• A novel is a novel “if it is fictional, if it is in prose, and if it is of

a certain length” (Doody 1)

• “A prose narrative of some length that has something wrong

with it” (Randal Jarrell, quoted by Derek Hand in A History of
the Irish Novel 2)

• “The truth is that the novel is a genre that resists exact

definition.” “The point about the novel is not just that it eludes
definitions, but that it actually undermines them. It is less a
genre than an anti-genre. It cannibalizes other literary modes
and mixes the bits and pieces promiscuously together”
(Eagleton, The English Novel: An Introduction 1)
There are also different views on the exact dates for the rise of the
novel in England and various texts have been considered as early
examples of novels. The rise of the novel is usually said to begin from
the early 1700s, but there are many earlier examples of fictional
writing in prose. To go back a century, there are the travel writings
of Thomas Nashe; other critics even consider John Bunyan’s The
Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) and Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko

5
(1688) as early instances of the development of the novel. In fact,
women have always written a lot of fiction, and in the late
seventeenth century they were also the greatest part of the
readership, the market for the new professional writers.
At first, and for more than a century, the novel was not well regarded
by serious critics. Poetry was a higher form of literary art. But there
was a growing market among the middle classes, especially among
ladies, for novels, and this market grew during the eighteenth
century until the novel reached a huge readership all over the world.

III.2. The Early Novel: Origin of the Term and Connection to

Realism
The very term “novel” means “new”, thus referring to a novel genre.
It is worth noting though that in the sixteenth century, the term
“new(e)s” was applied freely to writings which described either true
or fictional events (particularly in publications in periodicals). This
means that the distinction between “fact” and “fiction” became
entangled at the time and this blurring of boundaries was also
inherited by the emerging genre known as “novel”. In fact, many
early novels were presented as “true stories” or “histories” – notice
that some of the novels mentioned above do include the term
“history” in their titles or subtitles. In addition to the entanglement
between “fact” and “fiction” mentioned earlier, the inclusion of the
word “history” in the titles of some early novels might have
responded to other reasons. Firstly, “history” could have been used
as the Anglicized version of the French term for “story” – that is,
“historie”. Secondly, other theories postulate that, by including the
word “history” in the titles of their works, authors were trying to add
verisimilitude to their creations, particularly considering the prestige
of the autobiographical genre and the lack of prestige of the novel as
a new genre. In effect, novels soon became extremely popular
amongst readers (particularly women), but they lacked prestige.
They were considered “too easy to read” and even “bad for readers”,
especially women. The association between the novel and women
also contributed to the genre’s negative view amongst critics (gender
and genre issues).
Partly as a result of what has been said, early novels were closely
associated with realism and the notion of verisimilitude:7 a)
Plausibility of plot; 8b) Particularity character and setting; c)
Particularity of time and place; d) Language as an instrument of
communication. In relation to the question of language, some early
7 Verisimilitude: 1. a. The fact or quality of being verisimilar; the appearance of being true or real;
likeness or resemblance to truth, reality, or fact; probability. (OED)
8 Plausibility: 3. a. The quality in an argument, statement, etc., of seeming reasonable or probable;
appearance of reasonableness; believability, credibility; (formerly) spec. speciousness. (OED)
6
novels – for example, Defoe’s novels – adopted what was known as
the “middle style”, that is, a rather plain style adopted from
journalism.
The range of narrative styles and techniques in the novel was already
varied in the 18th century: in addition to the journalistic first-person
narrations of Defoe, the letters and diaries used by Richardson, or
the third-person all-knowing narrator of Fielding, we find the range
of narrative voices which were used for the next two hundred years.
And from narrative to political, from romantic to comic, from social
to satirical, the novel already had a wide range of themes and styles
by 1750. Notice also that by 1759, Laurence Sterne was playing with
the main conventions associated with the early novel (verisimilitude
included) in his masterpiece Tristram Shandy – see file titled
“Tristram Shandy – Notes”.

III.3. Theories on the Development of the Novel

Critics have proposed different theories to explain the consolidation
of the novel in the eighteenth century. These theories can be grouped
in two major schools or theories, the socalled historicist school and
the formalist school.
III. 3.1. The Historicist School
The representatives of the historicist trend defend that the
development of the novel as a literary genre had its origins in the
economic, politic and social circumstances of the age (Ian Watt, The
Rise of the Novel, 1957). These historicist explanations emphasise
the importance of the new middle class, their interest in journalistic
writings, the rise in alphabetisation, the popularity of circulating
libraries, even the decline of the theatre as sociocultural
circumstances that explain the interest in prose writing and the
development of the novel.

A) Rise of the Middle-Class

This new social group, the bourgeoisie, wanted to participate
actively in the social and political debates of the times. Men attended
the coffee houses where they read journals, and women retired to
their boudoirs where they also read privately and in groups. This
influential social group demanded new forms of entertainment for
themselves and for their wives and daughters, which fuelled the rise
of the novel as a new genre in the period.

B) Proliferation of Newspapers
The great profusion of newspapers demonstrates the increasing
concern of the people with domestic and foreign affairs which were
7
no longer an exclusive interest of the nobility and the politicians.
There were very popular newspapers such as the Tatler and the
Spectator – founded in 1709 and 1711, respectively. The proliferation
of newspapers and the people’s progressive interest in them show
how the population was more and more concerned with the truth of
what was happening in their society and, what is more important,
their desire of being told the truth of events. A different thing is the
attitude of the journalists because they were not very much
concerned with objectivity (“objective journalism” is a 20thc
concept). The editors used to defend different causes, social or
political issues, even if that implied sacrificing the truth.

➢ The London Gazette (1666, it started as The Oxford Gazette in

1665)

➢ The Tatler (founded by Richard Steele in 1709): Its declared

intention was to present accounts of pleasure, gossip,
provide entertainment and poetry, etc.
➢ The Spectator (1711): According to one of its contributors,
Addison, it intended to enliven morality with wit.
➢ Morning Chronicle (1769): It pioneered the idea of
Paliamentary recording.
➢ The Morning Post (1772).
➢ The Times (1785): Initially named the Daily Universal Registar,
changed its name to The Times in 1788 and became to print
gossip in an attempt to make the paper more popular.
➢ The Observer (1791)
➢ Bell’s Weekly Messenger (1796)
➢ The Political Register (1802)
➢ The Globe (1803)
C) Alphabetisation
Even though the number of people who could read and write was a
very small one, the process of alphabetisation was somehow
improved. Besides, there was a new social class – the upper-middle
class constituted by the bourgeoisie and the aristocrats – that lived
mainly in London and could read and write. In the case of women,
the number of those who could read and write was even smaller. But,
again, those that belonged to the more privileged classes found they
had a lot of time to read and improve themselves. Reading was one of
their favourite activities to spend their leisure time. We should take
into account that these women could not participate in social,
political or economic activities and that they did not know how to
give sense to their lives. The reading materials available to them
gave them not only the opportunity to have access to the world of
ideas but also a way of becoming aware of their own vital experience

8
as human beings. These materials served also a witpurpose in the
education of women. Consequently, women formed the vast majority
of the reading public at that time. This explains the interest of both
novelists and journalists in calling their attention. The writers
addressed their female public in a very open manner as we can see
both in the articles of the mentioned newspapers as in novels such as
Tristram Shandy.

D) Circulating Libraries
Since the price of books was very expensive for a vast majority of the
reading public, the period witnessed the implementation of various
and proliferating methods of borrowing new works of fiction and non-
fiction, usually by subscription membership of a non-profit library,
like those attached to the ‘literary and philosophical societies’
established in the larger towns in the second half of the eighteenth
century, or through the profit-making commercial outlets. These
libraries were socially exclusive, charging a high initial admission fee
as well as an annual subscription, and their committees saw it as
part of their duties to the serious reader to vet new publications.
Examples of this kind of libraries are the library at Chetham’s
Hospital, the Literary and Philosophical Society (1781), the New
Circulating Library (1792), the Portico Library (1803), etc. They were
mainly in important towns although they progressively reached
smaller areas within England. And they controlled the kind of books
they lent, executing thus serious censorship. What circulating library
offered was the possibility of some degree of unsupervised choice, a
limited freedom to exercise personal taste, and the chance to indulge
in imaginative fantasies free from oppressive social duties.

E) Serial Publication
Serial publication meant a revolution in the literary market. Although
nineteenth-century writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is the most
outstanding and popular example of a writer who published his
novels by instalments, serial publication began in the eighteenth
century. The instalments or fascicles were cheaper than books.
Therefore, long narratives were published in the form of chapters in
separate publications or in magazines and newspapers. If they were
popular among the reading public, the publishers continued offering
chapters and later published them in the form of bound volumes
which were more expensive. Thus, the economic base of literature
radically changed, and it was no longer a privilege of aristocratic
patronage or of gentlemanly libraries. The interest in literature was
the result of a general concern with world affairs and a desire for
knowledge about society and the need of new forms of
entertainment.

9
 F) Decline of Theatre
Please remember the influence of puritanism and its criticism of the
alleged immoratily of the Engish Stage (Jeremy Collier’s pamphlet)
that we mentioned in the previous unit. Many playwrights began to
write a new type of text in prose which could satify their public and
avoid censorship. This was the case of authors such as Aphra Behn,
William Congreve, or Joseph Fielding. This cirumstance also explains
the development of the novel in the eighteenth century.

III. 3.2. The Formalist School

Other critics have opted for offering a formalist explanation. For
them, the novel is a synthesis of a series of formal features that it
inherited from previous literary genres and subgenres or the result
of a reaction against those genres.
One of the most interesting accounts of the origins of the novel is the
one that relates it to a series of non-literary documents –popular
writings and accounts of political events- that could have preceded it
(Lennard J. Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English novel).
The publication of numerous newspapers and people’s interest in
them exemplifies the increasing social concern with the stories told
in them. But not all the contributors to those newspapers were
equally interested in telling the truth, in spite of which the audience
did not decrease. Thus, the dichotomy “Fact vs. Fiction” began to be
subverted. And one of the intrinsic characteristics of the novel as a
literary genre is precisely this epistemological confusion between
fiction and reality. The novel deals with questions such as “truth” (is
it possible to tell the truth?) that have been considered differently
throughout the history of the novel but that have always been dealt
with in it.
There were several narrative forms that preceded and developed into
the novels of writers such as Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley or Eliza
Haywood, as well as those of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and
Joseph Fielding. These narrative forms were imported from the
continent. Thus, Miguel de Cervantes’ The Quixote, or the Spanish
tradition of picaresque literature could have influenced the
development of the novel in England.
French literature also offered texts in prose which inspired English
authors:

1) The nouvelles or petites histoires: which used to relate in a

fictionalised form historic events from the French court.
2) The scandalous chronicle or roman à clef which offered sexual
intrigues of the French aristocracy.

10
3) The love letters which was one of the most common narrative
techniques in the French and English writings at the end of the
XVII and the beginning of the XVIII and which will be popularised
by Samuel Richardson.

Other critics, with a more nationalist perspective, have opted for

looking back to the history of English literature and they mention Sir
Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, the travel writings of the Renaissance and
even the coney-catching pamphlets about the lives of thieves as
native antecedents for the novel.

IV. Literature in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century:

Gothic Romances
As happened in the first half of the eighteenth century, the literature
of the second half was extremely varied, but, for the purposes of this
course, we will concentrate now on the development of the Gothic
novel. The Gothic in literature emerged in the second half of the
eighteenth century and it can be seen, partly, as a reaction against
the emphasis on reason that dominated the eighteenth century
because of the Enlightenment. Like Romanticism later, the Gothic
put the emphasis on the imagination vis-à-vis reason and it also
challenged the laws of realism and verisimilitude. As Fred Botting
puts it, Gothic fiction displays “the underside of enlightenment
and humanist values. Gothic condenses the many perceived threats
to these values, threats associated with supernatural and
natural forces, imaginative excesses and delusions, religious
and human evil, social transgression, mental disintegration
and spiritual corruption […] Gothic writing remains fascinated by
objects and practices that are constructed as negative, irrational,
immoral and fantastic” (Botting, 1996: 1). As for the main
ingredients of Gothic fiction, Botting adds: “Spectres, monsters,
demons, corpses, skeletons, evil aristocrats, monks and nuns,
fainting heroines and bandits populate Gothic landscapes as
suggestive figures of imagined and realistic threats. This list
grew, in the nineteenth century, with the addition of scientists,
fathers, husbands, madmen, criminals and the monstrous double
signifying duplicity and evil nature” (Botting, 1996: 1-2). Whereas
the Neoclassical literature of the Augustan period sought inspiration
in ancient Greece and Rome, the Gothic – like Romanticism later –
looked back to the medieval period as it invested in the irrational and
the supernatural.

IV.1. Gothic Novels or Gothic Romances?

11
From a present-day perspective, texts such as Horace Walpole’s The
Castle of Otranto (1764) or Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho
(1794) – both pioneering examples of Gothic fiction – would be
labelled as novels. However, in discussions of eighteenth-century
fiction, the term “Gothic romance” is more applicable than “Gothic
novel” as it highlights the link between Gothic fiction and the
supernatural vis-à-vis the link of the early novel with realism and the
notion of verisimilitude. The term “Gothic romance” also emphasises
the link that these narratives established to an alleged medieval past
which was seen as representing the irrational, the primitive and the
supernatural. Remember that, in Unit 2, devoted to medieval
literature, we tackled the genre of the “romance” – one that dealt
with love, chivalry and adventure, but one that also included the
fantastic and the supernatural (remember the figure of the Green
Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).
The following excerpts show how different writers attempted to draw
a distinction (quite precarious at times) between “novels” and
“romances” in the eighteenth century:

William Congreve’s Incognita; or, Love and Duty Reconcil’d:

A Novel (1692)
“Romances are generally composed of the Constant Loves and
invincible Courages of Hero’s, Heroines, Kings and Queens, Mortals
of the first Rank, and so forth; where lofty
Language, miraculous Contingencies and impossible Performances,
elevate and surprise the Reader into a giddy Delight, which leaves
him flat upon the Ground wherever he gives of, and vexes him to
think how he has suffer’d himself to be pleased and transported,
concerned and afflicted at the several Passages which he hath Read,
viz. these Knights success to their Damosels Misfortunes, and such
like, when he is forced to be very well convinced that ‘is all a lye.
Novels are of a more familiar nature; Come near us, and
represent to us Intrigues in practice… not such as are wholly
unusual or unpresidented.” (ii-iii)

Clara Reeve’s The Progress of Romance (2 vols., 1785)

“The Romance is an heroic fable, which treats of fabulous persons
and things. –The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and
of the times in which it is written. The Romance in lofty and
elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to
happen. –The Novel gives a familiar relation of such things, as
pass every day before our eyes, such as may happen to our
friend, or to ourselves; and the perfection of it, is to represent

12
every scene, in so easy and natural a manner, and to make
them appear so probable, as to deceive us into a persuasion
(at least while we are reading) that all is real, until we are
affected by the joys or distresses, of the persons in the story,
as if they were our own.” (I. 111)

Below is a table that summarises some potential differences:

ROMANCES NOVELS

1. Set in a distant, idealised 1. Set in a more recent, less

past heroic, setting
2. Based on the epic 2. Modeled on history and
3. Set in a remote and exotic journalism
location 3. Usually set in the locale of
4. Depict the life of the the author, a national form
aristocracy and designed of literature
for an upper-class reader 4. More middle-class
5. Long and episodic and less
6. Value the preservation of aristocratic readership
virtue and chastity 5. Shorter and more compact
7. Written in 3rd person of plot
8. Mix fact and fiction 6. Tend to focus on illegal
9. Follow the rules of doings and forbidden
bienseance and passions
vraisemblance 7. Written in first person or
in letter form
8. Tend to deny they are
fictional
9. Reject these rules since
they claim to be writing
history or recording life as
it is.

13
IV.2. Ingredients of Gothic Fiction

• Ingredients of Gothic fiction → mystery, the supernatural,

ghosts, monsters, vampires, darkness, death, decay, doubles,
madness, secrets and hereditary curses.
• Settings: haunted houses, castles, abbeys, ruins; far-away
places (associated with primitivism)
• Time: ‘Time for the realist novel tends to be linear and one-
dimensional; whereas time for the Gothic […] is often doubled,
as the novel delves into the ancient past as a way of
illuminating the present and the future, or as that past lingers
fearfully on within the present in the form of spectres’
(Eagleton, 2005: 100)
• Aesthetics of excess → the aesthetics of the Gothic is an
aesthetics of excess (of passion over reason, of the
supernatural and of fantasy over realism, of ornament in style
over plain style)
• Ambivalence → Cautionary tale, disturbing narrative; The
gothic has been considered both conservative and subversive
(Punter 1996: 12-18), politically and morally ambivalent
(Botting, 1996).
• Terror vs. Horror → terror (inspiring) vs. horror (paralyising)
→ ‘Terror and Horror are so far opposite, that the first expands
the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the
other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them’ (Ann
Radcliffe, ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry,’ 1826, pp 145–52)
• Terror and the sublime (the sublime and the beautiful)→
‘When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of
giving any delight and are simply terrible; but at certain
distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and
they are delightful, as we everyday experience’ // Pain and
terror ‘are capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a
sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tinged with
terror’. Edmund Burke. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin
of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) (2015: 34)

IV.3. Periodisation

• Classic Gothic Fiction in English Literature →

period from 1764 to 1820.

• First wave → pre-romantic Gothic

• Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764)
• William Beckford’s Vathek (1786)

14
 • Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
• Mathew G. Lewis’s The Monk (1796)
• Second wave → turn to introspection; influence of
Romanticism
• M Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)
• J. W. Polidori’s The Vampire (1819)
• C. R. Maturin’s Melmoth, the Wanderer (1820)
• The Gothic legacy continued, nonetheless, during
the Victorian period with works such as R. L.
Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr
Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian
Gray (1891), Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw
(1898) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).

NOTAS CLASE

The rise of the novel: realism/ verisimilitude claim to truth

POSIBLE PREGUNTA EXAMEN: por qué se da justo en ese momento el auge de la

novela: Hay 2 teorías:
- Historicist explanation: claims that the novel emerged in this particular period
as a result of social- economic factors, such as for example: Industrial
Revolution, Consolidation of a middle class, Development of urban life, increase
of leisure time, Popularity of periodicals (“the middle style”), Increase in
literacy, Circulating libraries, A taste for realism
- Formalist explanation: the theatre stopped being the main way of
entertainment. The novel is a continuation an evolution of diaries, biographies…
Prose writing with a kind of moral.

NON ESTÁ NAS NOTAS

NOVEL: poner en glosario. Features:

- Contemporaneity: novels are located in a specific period (past, present or

future).
- Credibility: include characters that are recognizable human
- Familiarity: the novel usually presents everyday experiences and deals with
common people. We feel identified with the characters.
- Rejection of traditional plots: the novel develops different plots, doesn´t have a
unique formula.

15
 - Tradition-free language uses a very simple everyday language
- Individualism: the novel concentrates attention on the specific physiology and
life experiences of individual people.
- Empathy: feel identify with characters, because they are humans close to us.
- Coherence and unity of design: the novel is a hole text organizes around a
particular main or character.
- Inclusivity, digressiveness, fragmentation: digressions and fragmentations are
unexpectable in novels, they don’t respond to a particular form.
- Self-consciousness about innovation: the writers includes prologue in which
explain the reader what kind of text they are writing.

METALANGUAGE: poner en glosario

PARATEXTS: poner en glosario

ROBIN CRUSOE

An individual who struggles between the society.

PREFACE:

Nos presenta un texto escrito por un hombre de negocios. El autor se inventa la figura
del editor, por el que primero pasa el texto antes de ser publicado. Es un texto para
negar la supuesta veracidad del texto ficcional que viene después (la historia de Robin
Crusoe contada de forma de un diario).

PURPOSE: “docere et delectare”

TYPE OF NARRATOR: first person narrator, homodiegetic. (written by himself and

resembling a diary), which adds verisimilitude. The details of family background and
particularity of place and time adds verisimilitude, credibility and probability.

It uses simple language (middle style)

LINEAR DEVELOPMENT: It has a chronological development. The novel is easy to
follow, and we only find one history.

IDEA OF ROBIN CRUSOE: Robin Crusoe is characterized as autonomous,

individualist  a character that goes against the rules of society. He doesn´t pay
attention to what her family say him. He could have had a more comfortable life, but he
chose another one. He is also adventurous, educated and well-bred.

Romance vs. Novels: características en la presentación del campus virtual

16
TERROR vs. HORROR: Terror is the feeling of awful apprehension whereas the
horror is the sickening realization that something horrible has happened

OROONOKO; OR THE ROYAL SLAVE (1688)

- It isn´t written to entertain readers, because he isn´t a hero, he is presented as a

normal person. The purpose of the text is to teach readers, the intention is not no
play with language, the only purpose is to know the history of the character. The
history is going to be giving to us with formal envelopment, we are going to read
it as it was written.
- The history is presented as true, claim to truth: verisimilitude, credibility
- First person narrator, not an omniscient narrator, functions as a character “eye-
witness” (not the main character ≠Robinson Crusoe): “I was myself an Eye-
witness”.
- Straightforward account: the narrator states that the narrative will be kept brief,
dynamic and engaging for readers: this passage testifies that the novel was, in
fact, “novel”, that is, an emergent literary genre. Used to shorter and come
engaging genres such as poetry or theatre, readers could find an excessively long
format tedious to read.

THE CASTLE OF ORONTO- HORACE WALPOLE

The narrator of the first edition is the translator of the manuscript—Z Horace Walpole

The narrator of the second edition is Horace Walpole, here he acknowledges to have
invented the story, denying his previous role as a mere translator.

The main text presents a third persona narrator, in this case, an omniscient narrator.

“Preface” to the first edition:

17