*Write a note on Gothic
Fiction or Gothic Novel or ‘The Novel of Terror’.
Answer:
The later
part of the 18th century are often dubbed as the age of transition from the neo-classicism of the school of Pope
to the Romanticism of the early 19th century. Gothic fiction is a
type of romance very popular from the 1760’s until the 1780’s. A Gothic fiction
or novel is characterised by ornamental details, the element of horror and
mystery. A Gothic fiction always has the element of suspense and terror. Such fiction
and novel often includes love stories which are destructively passionate and
landscape, which are gloomy and bleak.
Horace
Walpole’s, ‘Castle of Otranto’ (1764) was the first work of fiction
that broke away completely from the traditions of the realistic and didactic
novel and started the vague of what is call the Gothic romance or the novel of
Terror. Walpole and his followers created in their novels a blood-curdling and
hair rising world of hunted castles, eerie ruins, macabre ghost, harrowing spectacles
of murder and hundred other elements calculated to strike terror in the reader.
Most of the novelist transported themselves to the medieval Europe full of the
spirit of chivalry, romance and mystery. As most of them to the Middle ages for
their material, they are called Gothic novelist. Horace Walpole was an
intellectual who indulged the Gothic romance as an escape from the oppressive
boredom of the world of reality. Their Medievalism was a sham, a mode of escape.
Horace
Walpole, the pioneer of the Gothic novel in England, heralded the Romantic
Movement with his novel, “The Castle of Otranto”. He reacted against the
medievalism, didacticism, and sentimentalism of the followers of Richardson and
Fielding. The events narrated in his
novel the “The Castle of Otranto”, belong to Italy of the 12th or 13th
century. The scene of action is the
Castle situated at Otranto. Manfred, the villain hero and the lord of the
Castle of Otranto, is the grandson of the usurper of the kingdom. He intends
marrying his son to the beautiful Isabella, but on the day of the marriage, his
son was mysteriously killed and he himself decides to marry Isabella after
divorcing his wife. But Isabella escapes with Theodore, a young peasant.
Manfred decides to kill Isabella but mistakenly kills his own daughter. The Castle
becomes the metaphor of Gothicism and Supernaturalism. ‘The Castle of Otranto’,
was imitated by a large number of writers and one of them was Mrs. Ann Radcliffe.
Mrs. Ann Radcliffe’s
famous Gothic novel’s are—“The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and “The Italian
(1797). The scene in both them is the mysterious land of Italy in the
first one, Italy of the 16th century, while in the second one, Italy
of the 18th century. In her novel, she reconciles didacticism and
sentimentalism with romance whereas, Walpole had entirely forsaken the
realistic, didactic and sentimental tradition of 18th century novel.
The
novelists who tried their hands at the Gothic novels were-Matthew Gregory
Lewis, William Beckford, Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte and their Gothic novels
are—Matthew
Gregory Lew’s, ‘The Monk’ (1796), William Beckford’s, ‘Vathek’ (1786), Mary
Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein (1818), Emily Bronte’s, ‘Wuthering Heights’ and
Charlotte Bronte’s, ‘Jane Eyre’. But with the passage of time,
traditions of Gothic novel was no longer efforts as a novel.
God
Bless you all, by your dearest & nearest Podmeswar