What is a gothic text?

It is critically accepted that the gothic genre began in 1760, with Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. However, the hallmarks of gothic literature are by no means tied to this period. As far back as the middle-ages, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales presents the gothic themes of death, transgression and the supernatural and Angela Carter’s 1979 The Bloody Chamber is a modern example of gothic literature. Gothic literature is characterised by a rejection of neoclassical ideals of reason and order in favour of romantic ideals such as emotion and imagination. Gothic literature presents strange and unusual situations - it is not ‘realistic’. Instead of courtship and scandal the gothic presents doppelgangers and torture chambers. The world of a realist novel is defined by how the narrator sees and responds to it, whereas, that of a gothic novel is unsympathetic to the narrator who lacks control within it. To describe a text as gothic is to make a claim about its stylistic features and thematic concerns.Stylistically, the language of gothic literature is descriptive, contrived and elaborate. Where realist literature would use simple language and focus on plot over setting, the gothic novel features awe-inspiring descriptions of nature. This is one way in which gothic literature channels Romanticism, which saw itself as returning to a ‘golden-age’ of literature, inspired by the works of John Milton. In Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein, the creature learns his language from a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and so functions as a mouth-piece for this ornate style of language. Aside from style, there are a number of thematic tropes that can help to identify whether a text is gothic. The fact that the gothic deals with things that are not ‘realistic’ means it lends itself to melodrama. Some themes of gothic literature are heightened emotions, violence, butchery, death, the macabre, the grotesque, superstition and transgression, which all tend towards excess. This means that gothic literature is always on the cusp of comical farce. The gothic overlays the normal with the paranormal, creating suspense through how little audiences can know about the uncanny. This can be seen, again in Frankenstein, when Victor’s desire for forbidden knowledge and power over the natural means he encounters the supernatural; something similar but far more foreboding and unknown. The gothic will often feature an archetypal, Icarus type villain who is narcissistic and overambitious. Other themes of gothic literature include obsession, greed, contracts, religion, the past, madness, incarceration, transgressive sexuality and the subconscious.