Effective Political Factors in the Emergence of Gothic Literature
Subject Areas :
Parisa Changizi
1
,
HosseinAli Nowzari
2
,
Hadi Samadi
3
1 - Department of Law, Theology, and Political Science, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of Political Science, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran
3 - Department of Law, Theology, and Political Science, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Gothic literature, politics, law, religion, economy,
Abstract :
The current article aims to examine the political foundations that are the main cause of the emergence of the Gothic style and its flow in history. Many critics and thinkers who research the Gothic genre agree that the begin-ning of Gothic literature should be considered the 18th century. Therefore, in this article, the 18th century is con-sidered as the starting point of Gothic. Since the impact and penetration of Gothic as well as its ambiguity and complexity is a more obvious and ponderable literary genre, the focus and emphasis in this article is on Gothic literature, and Gothic literature of the 18th century is considered as the origin of this literary genre. The present speech focuses on Gothic literature and studies the aspects and political factors that played a role in the for-mation of this literature in the middle of the 18th century in order to show the origin of this literary and artistic genre that has lasted for nearly three hundred years. The effective political factors in the emergence of the Goth-ic genre have been manifested in the form of legislation in various fields such as justice, according to a religious trend, policy making in the field of economy with regard to entering the era of modernity and land reforms. Vi-jay Mishra, a contemporary literary critic and theoretician, states in an article titled "Gothic Sublimity" that the explosion of capital in the second half of the 18th century created a literary phenomenon that was later called Gothic. From the very beginning, Gothic has a hint of rebellion and extravagance that disrupts the security of the mind and produces fear and apprehension. Therefore, the desire to read it is related to the feeling of need to specify the historical significance of the Gothic by mentioning the factors influencing it. In fact, following a kind of genealogical approach, the present research seeks to find an origin that did not stop at a specific or certain point in history as a starting point or origin. Rather, it is always developing and moving. And this mobility of the starting point is precisely the secret of the stability and continuity of the Gothic genre over the centuries. Centu-ries that have many essential differences, but have created something stable, progressive and changing from their hearts, which, unlike other literary and artistic genres and styles, has proven to have no time limit: The Gothic genre.
Abrams, M.H. (1999). Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory. P 355-360. Penguin Books: London.
Baldick, C. (1990). The Concise Oxford Dic-tionary of Literary Terms. P 92-112. Oxford University Press: New York.
Beville, M. (2009). Gothic-Postmodernism: voicing the Terrors of Postmoderni-ty. State University of New York Press: New York.
Botting, F & Townshend, D. (2004). Gothic Critical Concept in Literary and Cul-tural Studies, vols 1-4. Routledge: London and New York.
Butting, F. (2010). Gothic. Translator: A. Placid. Afraz Publications: Tehran.
Byron, G & Townshend, D. (2014). The Gothic World. P3-14. Routledge: London and New York.
Carol, M. (2017). The Gothic and Death. Manchester University Press: Man-chester.
Chilvers, I. (2005). Dictionary of Art & Art-ists. P 252-263. Oxford University Press: New York.
Cuddon, J. A. (1989). A Dictionary of Liter-ary Terms. Penguin Books: London.
Fowler, R. (1987). A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms. P 105-116. Routledge & Kegan: New York.
Hogle, J. (1994). The Ghost of the Counter-feit in the Genesis of the Gothic. Rodopi: Amsterdam.
Holman, C. (1983). A Hand Book to Litera-ture. P 204-211. The Bobbs – Merrill Company: America.
Lewis, M. (2016). The Monk. Oxford Uni-versity Press: Oxford
Lewis, W.S. (1960). The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole Correspondence. vol. 20. Yale University Press: Lon-don
Maturin, C. (2008). Melmoth the Wanderer. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
McCarthur, T. (1992). The Oxford Compan-ion to the English Language. P 445-460. Oxford University Press: New York.
Mishra, V. (1994). The Gothic Sublime. State University of New York Press: New York.
Ousby, I. (1991). The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. P 405-413. Cambridge University Press: Cam-bridge.
Punter, D. (1998). Gothic Pathologies: The Text, Body, Law. Macmillan Press LTD: London.
Punter, D. (2012). A new Companion to the Gothic. Blackwell: Oxford
Radcliffe, A. (2008). The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Walpole, H. (2014). The Castel of Otranto. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Williams, A. (1995). Art of Darkness: A Po-etics of Gothic. University of Chica-go Press: Chicago.
International Journal of Political Science
ISSN: 2228-6217
Vol 13, No 2, March 2023, (pp. 175 - 190)
Effective Political Factors in the Emergence of Gothic Literature
Parisa Changizi1, HosseinAli Nowzari2*, Hadi Samadi3
1, 3Department of Law, Theology, and Political Science, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad
University, Tehran, Iran
2*Department of Political Science, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran
Received: 10 March 2023 ; Accepted: 20 June 2024
Abstract:
The current article aims to examine the political foundations that are the main cause of the emergence of the Gothic style and its flow in history. Many critics and thinkers who research the Gothic genre agree that the beginning of Gothic literature should be considered the 18th century. Therefore, in this article, the 18th century is considered as the starting point of Gothic. Since the impact and penetration of Gothic as well as its ambiguity and complexity is a more obvious and ponderable literary genre, the focus and emphasis in this article is on Gothic literature, and Gothic literature of the 18th century is considered as the origin of this literary genre. The present speech focuses on Gothic literature and studies the aspects and political factors that played a role in the formation of this literature in the middle of the 18th century in order to show the origin of this literary and artistic genre that has lasted for nearly three hundred years. The effective political factors in the emergence of the Gothic genre have been manifested in the form of legislation in various fields such as justice, according to a religious trend, policy making in the field of economy with regard to entering the era of modernity and land reforms. Vijay Mishra, a contemporary literary critic and theoretician, states in an article titled "Gothic Sublimity" that the explosion of capital in the second half of the 18th century created a literary phenomenon that was later called Gothic. From the very beginning, Gothic has a hint of rebellion and extravagance that disrupts the security of the mind and produces fear and apprehension. Therefore, the desire to read it is related to the feeling of need to specify the historical significance of the Gothic by mentioning the factors influencing it. In fact, following a kind of genealogical approach, the present research seeks to find an origin that did not stop at a specific or certain point in history as a starting point or origin. Rather, it is always developing and moving. And this mobility of the starting point is precisely the secret of the stability and continuity of the Gothic genre over the centuries. Centuries that have many essential differences, but have created something stable, progressive and changing from their hearts, which, unlike other literary and artistic genres and styles, has proven to have no time limit: The Gothic genre.
Keywords: Gothic literature, politics, law, religion, economy
In the Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, the Gothic story is defined as a type of popular novel that has spread since the middle of the 18th century. Subtitled A Gothic Tale, The Castel of Otranto is the first Gothic tale. Since its publication in 1747, this work was able to introduce the Gothic style as a literary style. Horace Walpole, the author of this work, was interested in medieval architecture and decorations of that period. He built a villa called Strawberry Hill in Gothic style for himself and decorated it with a lot of Gothic decorations. In the following, as he mentions in his memoirs, due to seeing a dream in which an armored hand called him to him from the top of a huge staircase, he was encouraged to write a Gothic work (Silver, 2014). In the early years after its publication, this book became famous among people as a Gothic story because it was narrated in the 12th and 13th centuries AD and in a Gothic castle, and the author himself added the same subtitle to his work in the second edition of the book. Many Gothic stories of this period are mysterious and scary. These stories include supernatural elements, wild and desolate landscapes, dark and dense forests, ruined buildings and mansions, tangled staircases, secret rooms and cellars, evil spirits and corpses that make the atmosphere of the story dark and gloomy. After the castle of Otranto, other famous writers wrote in this style and created remarkable works. Among them, we can mention William Beckford with Vathek (1786), Ann Radcliffe with Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Lewis with Monk (1796), Charles Maturin with Melmute the Wanderer (1820).
In the second half of the 18th century, there was a dominant tendency among readers to read emotional and scary works. Cemeteries, catacombs, undead, and horrific scenes became popular elements in Gothic stories. Gradually, with the spread of Gothic literature, this literary style found its fans in Germany and America. Especially writers like Lewis and Radcliffe were able to influence German writers like Schiller; In such a way that Schiller wrote his work titled Geisterseher (1789) and Räuber (1782) under the influence of Radcliffe. Schiller later influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge by translating his works into English. But it should be kept in mind that there is a difference between English and German Gothic. Compared to their English counterparts, German writers had a closer and more direct relationship with politics. The heroes of their stories were often political people because literature had the function of political criticism for Germany in the 19th century. For example, Schiller openly expresses his personal and political opinions in his works and confronts taboos and dominant social rules. The Ritter-Räuber romance of the Germans was an alternative version of the English Gothic, which ultimately led to the German literary revolution known as Strum und Drang (Botting & Dale, 2004).
At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, there were many changes in people's way of thinking and feeling towards supernatural matters and the origin of madness, fear, severe punishment, murder and crime. After many years of rationalism, the consistency of psychological and spiritual affairs and the rediscovery of the ancient world had a tremendous impact on the approach to literature. Stories about witches, sorcerers, sorcerers, lunatics, mythical creatures, etc. appeared suddenly. It was during this period that ghosts appeared as fictional characters in Gothic literature, madmen, prisoners, congeners, and patients entered the literature as other types of wise man, law-abiding and free man, moral man and healthy man. That is, human mind and body took the place of castles, churches and fortresses as a new place, and the city and its institutions became the setting of the Gothic story.
2- The origin of Gothic: the coming and going of the ghosts of the text
Gothic is always other than itself. This word challenges history. But who were the Goths originally? This question confronts us with an origin that is not actually an origin because the Goths belonged to years before the appearance of Gothic literature. They were a Germanic tribe in ancient and early medieval times. Therefore, this origin took the form of a kind of imaginative re-creation. From the very beginning, the Gothics were accused of being rootless and blamed. In architecture, this term was synonymous with anything that was not classical and violated the rules of classical architecture. The characteristic features of these buildings were the arches and vaults, the tendency to create vertical effects and to direct the gaze and thoughts towards the supernatural, and in order to induce a sense of holiness, colored windows were used a lot. In the 18th century, with the dominance of the Gothic neoclassical approach, it was equated with barbarism and medievalism. Both Gothic architecture and literature, in the first place, deviated from the classical rules of simplicity, symmetry and harmony and turned to decorations and strange descriptions, exaggeration and imagination. That is, if the satisfaction of reason was supposed to be obtained from classical rules, Gothic aimed at emotion and imagination and was far from the world of reason (Holman, 1983).
The early Gothic writers, who were all accused of rootlessness, went beyond and before their ancestors, and their stories took the form of ghost stories from the very beginning due to the summoning of what was in the past. In other words, the Gothic story is not because of the presence of ghosts as fictional characters in it, but because of its nature and the place where the ghosts come and go; Ghosts of the past, ghosts of other texts, ghosts of everything that is rejected and other, ghosts of other places and other people. Gothic is always involved in the creation and re-creation of other books. For this reason, it is like a castle and fortress, which leads to other arenas and texts through its nested paths and hidden corridors, because of its internal cellars. This is why broad areas such as political criticism, psychological criticism, cultural criticism, etc. are used for the analysis and criticism of Gothic texts. There is no single, self-contained text. That every text is polluted and impure. Any text is the place where the ghosts of other texts come and go, and there is no stray text, which is what the Gothic story refers to. Now in the postmodern era, the body and theme, form and content of the text may not be filled with ghost stories; But the ghosts are now the ghosts of other texts that have dissolved in the form of intertextuality in another place and body, and the ghost always creates danger and terror for the happy residents of a mansion. The ghost disrupts the sense of ownership and security, and ownership in the text is the author's ownership of the work he has produced, and the reader's ownership of understanding, receiving and owning the content of the work. The ghosts that haunt the text question these possessions (Punter, 1998). Therefore, a form of being that can tolerate this situation must be discovered, that is, the ability to tolerate the coming and going of ghosts and the nature of the soul. The soul endangers the physicality and its limitations and establishes the absence of the body. In all texts, the reader is called to grieve this loss and the elusive nature of meaning. A text that is like a fish with scales and layers and also slippery. Therefore, the reader of the Gothic text must also be a ghost and be able to fly above time and space, above causality and objectivity, above the text itself.
3- Political factors affecting Gothic
3-1 Gothic politics and aesthetics
During the 1660s, the word Gothic in the English language was a word that summed up a special form of constitutionalist politics. This period coincided with the Restoration period, during which Charles II returned to the throne. Gothic meant the present in the form of a mythical past. For the users of this term, the present tense was the embodiment of England's mythical past, which contained many aspects of national pride. The entry of the word Gothic into the English language dates back to the early 17th century. At that time, theorists in the field of politics intended to determine the race and law of England. They recognized their race as Angles and Saxon, but the heart of their republican law belonged to the Goths. Due to the dominance of the Goths over Rome and their influence in that area, the word Gothic quickly became a symbol of retrospect and value and credit for the ancient era and the parliamentary institution. In the middle of the 18th century, there was a tendency among historical, geographical and social researchers to divide different periods of civilization based on historical periods and the way humans became civilized; With the idea that human civilization is progressing and evolving. Therefore, a progressive model for civilization was drawn. In this article, natural laws were the guide for the progress of civilization. According to this theory, every civilization, regardless of where it was formed, goes through more or less the same general and universal stages for development: from the hunter and gatherer stage to the pastoral and agricultural stage, then feudalism and finally the modern industrial era. Therefore, the analysis of the stages and methods of production leads to the creation of a series of legal institutions, habits, literary and aesthetic forms. That is, each stage includes cultural awareness, public aesthetics and politics. It was in the meantime that the position of the word Gothic was clearly written by a researcher named Richard Hurd in a work entitled Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762). According to him, Gothic belongs to the chivalry period in terms of behavioral system and to the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance in terms of aesthetic style. Horde adds that the behavioral system of chivalry arose from the feudal structure. This structure reflects the Gothic tradition of decentralized government where power was in the hands of barons and landlords. And this is exactly the paradox that is seen in the heart of the Gothic system as a system that preserves differences. According to the 17th century politicians who chose the word Gothic as a symbol of the parliamentary government, a stable and durable system could be created from differences. These differences were the reason for Horde to use the Gothic tradition to define the art and culture of the feudal era. Because at that time the local owners were in conflict with each other, the role of soldiers as knights and knights became important. These people were required to follow special military order and etiquette and special rituals. Chivalry was not a strange and unknown profession at that time, but was considered a completely normal behavior (Byron & Dale, 2014).
Horde believed that the Gothic historiography and political tradition in England included aesthetics. At the time of writing letters about chivalry and romance, the prevailing artistic style in England was based on neo-Aristotelian patterns, and it emphasized order, lawfulness, and magnificent symmetry. This style was aligned and related with the concentrated power and highly bureaucratized government of England. There were collectors and researchers who confirmed the existence of another style that did not follow classical symmetries and rules. And this style was the one Horde used in his work, i.e. Gothic. Gothic aesthetics described medieval castles that represented an age when humans lived outside the center through adaptability and defensive initiative. Living outside the city and away from the central government required such an architectural structure and behavior.
Horde believed that the Gothic historiography and political tradition in England was subject to aesthetics. At the time of writing letters about chivalry and romance, the prevailing artistic style in England was based on neo-Aristotelian models, and it emphasized order, rule of law, and magnificent symmetry. This style was aligned and related with the concentrated power and highly bureaucratized government of England. It was Darren's collection and researchers who confirmed the existence of another style that did not follow classical symmetries and rules. And this style was the one Horde used in his work, i.e. Gothic. Gothic aesthetics described medieval castles that represented an age when humans lived outside the center through adaptability and defensive initiative. Living outside the city and away from the central government required such an architectural structure and behavior. The researchers also described the interior spaces of the towering churches and monasteries that housed a generation of worshipers who lived and died there. Gothic emerged as a type of public expression of the democratic and cooperative system of power in the form of art and architecture and a literary genre that stood against the centralized royal system. Therefore, the supporters of Aristotelian aesthetics and the bureaucratic and centralized system of absolute monarchy referred to Gothic architecture and art as a kind of lawless and unconventional art (Panter, 2012). But Gothic had its own rules, and Horde believed that the charm and wonder of Gothic lies in its inherent duality. Because it creates unity from difference and brings various interests to agreement in a single atmosphere. Therefore, the path of Gothic movement from a political matter to an aesthetic matter was very straightforward. The same difference of opinions, diversity and decentralization that he demanded in politics brought to the fore in aesthetics and art. Classical Aristotelian aesthetics are suitable for grand and public buildings, but the Gothic style is distinguished by its difference and lawlessness. In 18th century England, Gothic found a meaning beyond what it had until then. Gothic was a report of moods, habits, inclinations, materials, expressions and behaviors that seemed obsolete and out of fashion for the 18th century. Therefore, it became a great example of things that wanted to throw the past on the present. The area of England was full of the ruins of the medieval past and the daily life of the English people was spent among the pieces and parts left from the previous era. In other words, Gothic was mixed with people's daily life. Old Gothic castles were prepared and equipped for their new inhabitants. Gothic was a way to live in the past, to live in an alien architecture. The quiet moment of the presence of Gothic showed the sterile culture and customs of the 18th century. A culture that, on the one hand, was oriented towards the future and progress, and on the other hand, still seeks its originality in the past (Silver, 2014).
Horace Walpole is one of the prominent examples of writers who brought Gothic from the past to the present. The Castle of Otranto is set in medieval Italy in an area that once belonged to the Goths. The story begins in the house of a person named Manfred. Manfred is a survivor of the oppressive family of Otranto who came to power because of killing King Alfonso. The story begins with the arrival of a young man named Theodore, who is the rightful owner of the castle. In the meantime, supernatural events took place so that the rightful person would get his right. King Alfonso's spirit comes into action through his own portrait and hat to finally reveal the truth. Walpole's work is rightfully the biggest step that has been taken in the direction of the emergence and realization of supernatural affairs in literature. This work is remarkable both in terms of structuring, the role of women in the story, and the reaction of people and their behavior in unnatural situations. It clearly shows the behavior of honorable people and autocratic people and differentiates between constitutional and absolute monarchy (Lewis, 1960).
In England in the 18th century, many efforts were made to legitimize and value the nation, and these efforts were often on the shoulders of writers whose archaeological thirst had forced them to turn to the remaining works from the Middle Ages. What was supposed to give identity and character to a nation like England and form their cultural, historical and political foundations was searched for in the Middle Ages. As a result, researchers and scholars found similarities between Gothic architecture and English authors who wrote outside the rules of the classical tradition. Gothic aesthetics was a means of changing the mindset that only looked forward and progressed, and it did so by highlighting the irrational and unenlightened middle ages (Sweet, 2014). Scholars and archaeologists praise Gothic's combination of beauty and barbarism, its power and awe, its emphasis on ornamentation, its irregularity. These scholars created a type of modern culture that was independent from the neoclassical version and was more related to imagination than reason. And these were exactly the values that the Enlightenment had canceled. Gothic recreated what the neoclassical aesthetic had suppressed. Gothic literature was greatly inspired by architecture. Ruined monasteries, churches, castles, old windows that are owl nests, or windows that open to church courtyards, all provided food for literature. It was never possible for a Roman or Greek temple to produce the same effect as Gothic buildings. If the classical aesthetics deals with reason, the Gothic aesthetics had passion and imagination in mind. Gothic suspicion also included the enlightened and law-abiding atmosphere that modern society promised. In this peace and progress that seemed imminent, Gothic dealt with fears and threats that jeopardized that security. Is the promise of freedom, enlightenment, justice and equality of modernity a practical promise? With the French Revolution and the beginning of the era of terror and terror, Gothic suspicions became true and targeted rationality and civil society. The political, economic and social system that the modern society has realized has turned Gothic into a type of literature that was a rebellion against bourgeois rationalism and the Enlightenment. In this case, the threats came from within the society and the present time and forced people to suppress their interests. Therefore, this brought Gothic and Romantic together in terms of giving importance to imagination and having nostalgia for the past. In both of these styles, fantasy acted as the enemy of reason and materialism (Baldick and Migball, 2012).
3-2 Politics and religion
The relationship between Gothic and religion was controversial from the beginning. A group considered the use of religious spaces in Gothic as a sign of its longing for the past and searching for authenticity in the past. Some considered the use of the supernatural in stories to be a sign of skepticism towards the achievements of modernity, while others considered it a sign of fear of superstitious and irrational forces that were rooted in the past and stemmed from some religious tendencies. Those researchers who considered 18th century Gothic to be a critical look at parts of religion in general and Catholic religion in particular, interpreted the ruined cellars and monasteries as the failure of the feudal system and the superiority of the Protestant religion over the Catholic religion. Instead, Montague Summers strongly emphasized the religious character on the one hand and the Gothic romance on the other. He was an English Catholic researcher, writer and priest who did extensive research on Gothic literature, vampires, witches, wizards and alchemy. According to him, Gothic literature was in connection with the aristocracy and the church and not in opposition to it. Summers was against and did not accept the belief that Gothic literature is an evasive representation of the oppression of the feudal past. Summers says that the spirit of the Gothic story is the embodiment of romanticism, and the romantic person cannot be a revolutionary, but is regressive and dwells in the sadness of the past. The romantic man looks towards the past and tries to revive it. Repressiveness and nostalgia are actually a form of resistance against bourgeois modernity, and Gothic is a form of dissatisfaction and doubt. The efforts that aligned the Gothic with the Romantics caused the Gothic story to be looked at more seriously and deeply, and it was no longer simply considered a popular story and far from reason. In fact, Gothic is a reaction to the superficial and widespread materialism of the 18th century. What is essential in the Gothic story is the critical approach and rejection of the vital elements of modern rationality. For critics like Summers, who have looked at Gothic literature with a supernatural and religious perspective, the value of this literature lies in portraying metaphysical truths against the widespread atheism of modernity. Summers had researched alchemy, witchcraft and vampires for many years and believed that the materialism of the modern age cannot deny the supernatural elements and that these elements are everywhere and surround us. Therefore, the peace that modernity promises to achieve with the help of reason is nothing more than a lie. He considered the Gothic story to be a revolt against materialism, which had become the spirit of the era. According to the thinkers who support the Summers Gothic school, it is the revival and revival of medieval spirituality. Gothic is a protest against the blindness of Enlightenment rationality. Gothic literature is a stance against mechanical and atomistic views of the world. Somers and his followers did not accept that Gothic literature was anti-Catholic and maintained their position that Gothic was unmistakably similar to certain teachings of the Church. However, Summers criticizes many writers of that era for their anti-Catholicism and because they used the symbols and signs of the age of faith in a mocking manner in line with the nature of the common people. These authors described the monks and Christian brothers as monkeys and mocked them without understanding the depth and richness of their rituals and religious places and showed the place of evil and crime. According to Summers, the use of such characters and places in some Gothic stories was simply a popular style and method. And since these places, characters and rituals had become strange and foreign to ordinary people, writers used them to add strangeness and ambiguity to their stories and also to make their stories mysterious. Of course, it was not the only low-level and common literature in which the Catholic religion was viewed with a critical eye, Lewis's Monk and Maturin's Melmute The Wanderer are among the valuable works of Gothic literature in which the Catholic religion is openly criticized and attacked. Against those like Summers who believed that the existence of many sentences, scenes and characters against the Catholic Church in these novels is actually a criticism of the secondary aspects of Catholicism and not its doctrine. In fact, the source of creating fear in these apparently anti-Catholic stories is the secondary and side affairs of Catholicism, not its spirit. In this way, the supporters of the Catholic Church accused the critics and some Gothic writers of intending to replace the Protestant religion through literature and criticism and thus penetrate the minds of the people (Baldick and Migball, 2012).
Many English stories attack and criticize the Catholic religion and principles. In these works, there is often a priest or a priest who plays the role of the evil person in the story, and the Catholic teachings make him a person full of emotional and sometimes sexual problems. Such stories made the fire of the fight between Catholics and Protestants hotter. Medieval spaces, the fact that most of the works take place in southern regions such as Italy, how the evil and negative character of the story, which is often related to religion, uses religious principles and teachings to justify and legitimize his actions; It makes everyone's mind realize that maybe all of these are beyond mere storytelling and there are stronger motives behind them. However, with the fever of the fight between Catholics and Protestants, the criticism of the Gothic story also found a new direction and in the 19th century, the psychological approach was more visible in these works. The works that were once analyzed from the point of view of the conflict between social, political and religious tendencies, now with the strength of psychology showed that they are much more than what they showed on the surface. For example, Ann Williams used Freudian concepts to analyze and criticize 18th century Gothic literature in her book Art of Darkness, and based on that, she analyzed the monasteries and religious institutions in the stories. In the monasteries and convents that make up the structure of the Catholic Church, monks and nuns called each other brothers and sisters and the whole organization had a patriarchal structure. According to his interpretation, the use of historical spaces related to the Middle Ages in Gothic literature of the 18th century means that the mentioned cultures and events are far away from us; And this dual distance satisfies the dreamer's need, which both denies reality and inevitably faces it. As much as the author emphasizes that his story is related to a very distant time and place, it turns out that the story is related to here and now. It was after Freud that many critics and researchers analyzed the historical dimension of the story from a psychological perspective. This point of view was different from the opinions of people like Summers, who saw the Gothic story in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church and a kind of longing for the past, or with the point of view of those who saw it as a fear of the return of medieval superstition and ignorance. In fact, these theorists interpreted the ruins in the Gothic story as equivalent to the collapse of the feudal era. But in psychological interpretations, history and historical monuments all found a new meaning and concept. For example, cold and dimly lit corridors were considered equivalent to the human mind, and its tangled and nested interior also hinted at the complexity and distortions of the unconscious. In fact, now the fear is not from the dark and fossilized past of mankind or from the social and cultural disturbances of the post-revolution era, which originated from the unconscious. It was after this that every ruin and ruin was interpreted as a symbol of the collapse of idealism, and dark corridors and prisons as a symbol of the unconscious. The world of Gothic literature was based on the inner and lower world of the subject, and history and historical monuments became a timeless and placeless element, i.e. a non-historical or imaginary thing (Williams, 1995).
3-3 Policy and Law
18th century Gothic is preoccupied with the law with all its limitations, practices and judgments. In the stories of this period, we see various manifestations of human law: legal characters and legal events are the faces of these stories. Many characters appear after the occurrence of legal cases and issues. Someone is hanged, one's property is looted, another is unjustly deprived of inheritance or punished for a crime he committed, and so on. This insistence on the law as the origin requires an endless series of legal endings. Often the story revolves around a legal matter. These matters are given in the book with great detail and accuracy so that the reader can be informed about the course of judicial affairs. In legal disputes, there is always a powerful discourse of creation and reconstruction on one side, and on the other side, supplementary discourses and amendments that add to the law and challenge the main body of the law. Fictional characters such as lawyers, judges, and public prosecutors both speak in the language of the law and can question the law. In the stories where these people are among the fictional characters, there is a distinction between good and bad, famous and infamous, pointless and easy-going people, and such personality traits make the plot of the story. The encounter of the characters and the encounter with a phenomenon called the law, which has agents and forces under its control, is an important point in creating a Gothic story. Among the most important examples that can be mentioned are Dickens' Lawless House, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Gulliver's Travels and Balzac's works. Lawyers in this field are the main source that pollutes and damages the reasoning of the law. In many cases, the law and its tools and forces in these stories cause damage not only to the soul but also to the body of the characters. Law in these stories means the control of the language over the body. The language of law and the discourse of law cast bodies into paths and flows that are unpredictable, unreliable, and often inescapable. Lawyers and legislators as the owners of the law in the Gothic story are the owners of the body and the new masters (Panter, 1998). This new feudality, whose property and possessions are not the land but the human body, resides in the notes and lines of the law. And just as the feudal lords of the past centuries lived in gothic and impenetrable castles, the notes and articles of the law are equally dark, twisted, terrifying, misleading and impenetrable. The law is basically Gothic in these stories, and in a way, its lines and principles play the role of terrifying Gothic castles, although with more anonymous owners and protectors and a softer appearance.
The system that is implemented and propagated by justice is irrational in itself. This system appeals to a sense of justice that is foreign to ordinary people and supports the discourse of desire for power. As the second half of the 18th century approaches, the face of the judge, who had made his way into Gothic literature a little before, changes and transforms from a non-professional person to a person fully versed in the law and powerful. In fact, the face of the law, which was changing day by day, became an organization with great power. One of the clear examples of the decisive and powerful presence of the judge in the story is Otranto Castle. At the end of the 18th century, judges committed crimes and murders and were the absolute power of their time. Trying to achieve justice and taking risks and sufferings became the main goal of the heroes of Gothic stories. The dark and terrifying part of the story that made the hero and the reader feel increasingly afraid was the fluctuation between power and lust. Lawyers and judges depicted a facet of the law, one branch of which was connected to authority and the other branch to lust. The appearance of autocratic rulers in the stories of the late 18th century was both an excuse for lust and obedience to it. Lawyers often knew the system but were not interested in involving their clients in it. The judges did not even know the system, they solved the problem decisively and did not adhere to any system. In fact, they were a symbol of the aristocracy who considered an area to be their property. That domain was justice and the body of the victims. At the end of the 18th century, two basic domains appeared in Gothic fiction: the prison and the court. The prison in this era reflects the reality of the penal system. Instead of being full of people, most of the prisons were filled with debtors and those who had lost their rights and had to remain in prison until justice was served. Many prisoners were punished even after acquittal. They suffered in prison because they were unable to pay the ransoms that the prison demanded from them to release their bonds. Prisons were under the control of bodies that were outside the prison; Officers, constables, juries, presiding officers. But practically, there was no established system of control and inspection, and the reason was that the wardens ran their prisons based on personal benefit. Therefore, no one was as helpless as the prisoners and no institution could be found more extortionate than the prison institution (Panter, 1998). The condition of the ruins of the prison was due to the refusal of the judges to inject money into the prisons. Some writers tried to depict the social life of prisoners and show the prison as a reversed image of the outside world. But the wall that separated the outside world and the prison was not so impenetrable. At the end of the 18th century, the image of the prison was linked to the city, and it changed from a desolate and hellish place reminiscent of medieval dungeons to an institution in the heart of the city. It is both isolated and social, the home of secret conspiracies and not the place of desperation. And it was from this time that we witnessed the revolution of psychology and the formation of boundaries between the inner world and the outer world. In the early stories, escape was not an issue; The prisoner could not escape. It was only with the stories of Radcliffe and Lewis that the mechanism of escape emerged, paralleling the image of the collapse of the Bastille prison. In The Secrets of Adolfo, Emily spends most of her life in prison: sometimes in a fetid dungeon, sometimes in her jailer's tyrannical castle, and often in her secret and forbidden attitudes. The main reason for this change is the status of fictional characters. Prison scenes are present in most of the texts of this period and play an important role in the narration of the story. The writers of the late 18th century showed the important aspect of social anxiety that the writers of the beginning of this century did not pay attention to. In these stories, the law of its defects and the invisible border of guilt and innocence, the personality of the judge and the prison itself as the hidden matter of human existence were taken into consideration, and flashes of psychology as well as criticism of social and judicial systems shone on the stories. Therefore, personal experiences, interests, and motivations and facing the outside and inside world were emphasized, and the body was considered as a repressed, imprisoned, and wrong thing (Carol, 2017).
3-4 politics and ecology: (Walpole, Radcliffe, Maturin)
Outer space had a magical meaning for 18th century Gothic literature. The representation of European locations in Gothic fiction existed in order to explore social anxieties. Strange and foreign spaces played an essential role in the emergence of Gothic aesthetics in the late 18th century. Alien geographic environments and spaces imbued with Catholic rituals were used as an alternative to the fundamental fears of that period in order to examine their influence and influence on society from a safe and distant position. For example, writers such as Walpole, Radcliffe and Maturin used lofty and strange places to create and cultivate fictional characters and political ideas in anxious geographical spaces, considering the conditions of their country. Gothic texts in this period often questioned place as another and its relationship with national identity. These texts narrated chaos and disorder by turning geographical spaces into alienated places. In England at that time, the fear of the other, which included other parts of Europe, the East and America, defined English identity. In this period, the nation of England took a defensive position against another attack. Gothic texts took advantage of the potential change of English identity by finding another way to it. On the one hand, in these texts, Catholic and continental Europe or the Far East were shown as places of perversion and corruption, and on the other hand, Englishness and authenticity were considered. Gothic narratives showed how the monster of the other creates disgust and showed geographical places as if they were foreign and strange as if they were in the heart of England and threatened its identity. The place in these stories was not specific to the climate in which the story took place, but had a symbolic function.
In the 18th century, the external environment of England was shaped by agricultural activities and the economy based on it. But this environment changed under new economic requirements. At the heart of this change was the constant conflict between the new and the old, which had to shape the external environment based on the newly formed taste. The struggle in rural England was over property, wealth, ownership, rights and progress. Many properties and lands were reduced and hedged due to the land reform law, and the boundaries of the properties were determined. These changes in defining boundaries on a rural-district basis were a sign of the British determination to defend their identity against another invasion. During the 18th century, the geographic spaces of the nation were divided and demarcated, fixed and impenetrable borders were established between the owners' lands. The driving force was the economy. The economy changed the external spaces, turning large farms into smaller farms with definite boundaries and dimensions. The fields were separated by wooden fences. There was no sign of open and unfenced fields. The new land reforms were a sign of modernity and the removal of feudal lords from political affairs. These changes inspired Gothic writers. Storytellers longed for virgin lands that would return England to its former glory. The hand of man had not invaded these vast lands and had not turned them into agricultural fields and properties of small farmers. They wanted to see the external environment as natural and not manipulated (Reynolds, 2014).
The unconquerable and wild nature, the nature that manifests the sublime and the human hand has not been able to change its face, the nature that is now frightening for the modern man; This nature forms the soul of the word environment and space in the Gothic literature of the 18th century. They implicitly referred to peoples and moods that ideological and economic forces had not been able to transform. Gothic texts became precise due to these geographical changes. Modern humans were reluctant to get involved with ancient traditions, customs and way of life. But they were not completely free from the past and could not completely deny the past like the rootless nations. Gothic texts attacked the assumptions and beliefs of modern nations and despised their efforts to appear rooted. Horace Walpole's use of Gothic aesthetics has nothing to do with creating and exploiting the geographical spaces of Italy and its surrounding areas. Rather, in this way, he cast his designs on a geographical space that allowed him to develop an ideology that was contrary to many political methods and approaches in England of his time. The alien potential of the places in Italy that Walpole uses in his story evokes associations for the reader that connect him with Catholicism and the corrupt hierarchical system of the feudal era. For the middle class who were readers of Walpole's works, the geography of Otranto is frightening and brings to mind the oppressive control of the feudal era. Walpole himself was a supporter of the liberal party from a political point of view and distinguished between legitimate and illegitimate powers. Through his work, he was able to show the difference between living under the banner of an autocratic ruler and under the guidance of someone who, although legally and legally the owner of the throne, grew up among the middle class. In his book, he distinguishes between two tendencies: the aristocratic and feudal tendencies and the liberal tendencies that sought land reforms and shortening the hands of the aristocracy from many regions of England. It is true that the real owner of the castle, that is, the son of the murdered king, is one of the nobles, but his destiny has been placed in the lap of modern and modern thoughts and with the middle class. Growing up in this new school makes Theodore an example of an English person who is receptive to new ideas while being original. The message of the effect is clear. Walpole sees the solution to the conflict between the past and the new not in the absolute denial of the past, but in justifying its correct principles. By moving away from his place and time, because the story takes place in the 13th century in Italy, Walpole allows the reader to get to know the conflicting ideologies indirectly from a safe distance and be able to take the side of the best solution. In this story, the ruined castle is a sign of the declining aristocracy. A sign of an ideology that no longer works. This castle should be restored by new and rightful owners and made suitable for habitation (Hogle, 1994).
Geography was important to Ann Radcliffe in another way. He did not have much to do with party and political fights, and for him, space and place were an arena that he wanted to remove from the absolute male ownership and make it more feminine. Through landscapes and mirrors, Radcliffe provides a space for women of the 18th century, where women can enjoy everything that until then was the place and arena of male experiences. Radcliffe's outer environments are an escape from the harsh reality regarding women. Likewise, these places are constant threats in the process of growth and change of women and encourage them to return to the warm and comfortable embrace of home. Radcliffe uses the difference between internal and external spaces, rural landscapes and threatening urban landscapes and leaves a series of dualities; wild and domestic, individual and social, natural and cultivated, masculine and feminine. Radcliffe's literary geography oscillates between the sublime and the heartwarming. Between majestic and scary landscapes and simply beautiful ones. The sublime is considered masculine and masculine, while the beautiful is considered feminine and pleasant. The female protagonists in Radcliffe's works do not limit themselves to existing female spaces and take the risk of stepping into potentially threatening male spaces. For Radcliffe, nature is also a cultural matter and it can never be viewed from an impartial perspective. In his works, using Gothic aesthetics, Radcliffe intends to show that with literary geography, landscapes, and mirrors, he can be proud of the lawlessness of the law. After leaving the warm and safe environment of the house and accepting the dangers of the new environment, the heroes return to their previous environment, but this time not as we witnessed in the ruins of Otranto Castle, but to the same place and the original safety but with a different insight and deeper experiences. The experiences and worlds that the hero goes through expand his biological boundaries. It is true that the return is to the same place as before, it is home, but this odyssey-like journey somehow returns the hero to his previous place, which is now the place that earns credit from its inhabitants. For the writers of the 18th century, place and ecosystem was an ideological matter and it could not be limited only to descriptions of outer space and landscapes. If they chose places from Italy for their story, it was because they could clearly show the conflict between the new and the old, libertarianism and feudalism, modern and traditional. Every potential place had the old and the new in it, and the struggle between them was an ideological struggle for the superiority of one over the other. This conflict led to the change of the shape of the place and its identity. Therefore, the place in the eighteenth -century Gothic literature was the character of one of the fictional characters (Brabon, 2014).
Charles Maturin also benefited from eco-economy policies, with the difference that for him Ireland was a place to preserve national identity. In Maturin's works, the strange nature of the external spaces and environment of Ireland at the end of the 18th century brings to mind a meaning of the national ecosystem, in which and against its greatness, everything seems trivial. While showing the ruins of the ancestral home, Maturin intends to change the shape of the Irish ecosystem. He places his fictional characters in faded and lost places in the hope that they will find motivations to continue and start again in these ruins. His fictional characters consider these ruins superior to anywhere else in the world and live in the hope of renovating them. The ruin in Maturin's story is not a decaying thing. It is not a place that belongs only to the past and should be forgotten. The ruin is the place where the characters find themselves and their roots, and their mission in the story is to restore it. For Maturin, the ruined places are a sign of British colonialism. These ruins tell the history of Ireland. For Maturin, the place has a nationalist aspect. A place that seems to be finished and regrettable through the description and display of ruins, the sign of Stowe's Irish identity has two natures; A place with latitude and longitude and geographical dimensions that is located here and now and has been occupied by England, which is a historical fact. And a place that can never be occupied and set specific dimensions for it, a ghostly place that both does and does not exist. The place is a nameless ruin, as if it is not a place that really exists and has coordinates, but at the same time it is. Maturin uses the Gothic mechanism of ruined castles to depict the strange absence that forms the core of Irish identity. Ruin as a soul, as something that is and is not (Brabon, 2014). Maturin's movement in the story is from ontology to ghost ology. The hero of Melmute the Wanderer, like a wandering soul, crosses all the borders of Europe and goes from one country to another, questioning the historical and geographical boundaries and the place as a static place. The place in Gothic stories is where the conflicts manifest themselves; The conflict between old and new, between feudalism and liberalism, between masculinity and femininity, colonizers and colonized, conscious and unconscious, between being and being a ghost.
4- Conclusion
During the 1660s, the word Gothic in the English language was a word that summed up a special form of constitutionalist politics. This period coincided with the Restoration, during which Charles II returned to the throne. Gothic meant the present in the form of a mythical past. For the users of this term, the present tense was the embodiment of England's mythical past, which contained many aspects of national pride. The entry of the word Gothic into the English language dates back to the early 17th century, when theorists in the field of politics intended to determine the race and law of England. The relationship between Gothic and religion was controversial from the beginning. Some considered the use of religious spaces in Gothic as a sign of its longing for the past and searching for authenticity in the past. Some others considered the use of supernatural matters in stories as a sign of skepticism towards the achievements of modernity, and a group considered it a sign of fear of superstitious and irrational forces that were rooted in the past and stemmed from some religious tendencies. In the 18th century, the legislation was based on the foundations of modernity and also the changes that took place in the attitude towards the judiciary; Led to the discovery of new characters in Gothic literature in the form of a judge, a defense lawyer, a prisoner, a fugitive suspect, a guard, as well as a prison and a court as the setting of the story. In fact, many Gothic texts were inspired by events that had their roots in judicial affairs. For the writers of the 18th century, place and ecosystem was an ideological matter and it could not be limited only to descriptions of outer space and landscapes. If they chose places from Italy for their story, it was because they could clearly show the conflict between the new and the old, libertarianism and feudalism, modern and traditional. Every potential place had the old and the new in it, and the struggle between them was an ideological struggle for the superiority of one over the other.
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