Going GOTHic…• It was a dark and stormy night

• …or life, as the case may be…

GOTH vs. GOTHIC

Degrees of Darkness???

Marilyn Manson …or Abandoned Mansion?

http://gothicimages.org/component/option,com_datsogallery/Itemid,26/func,viewcategory/catid,11/

Body Piercings… or Piercing Screams

Rejection OF society VS. Rejection BY society

We're trapped within ourselves, in a prison of the mindClutching on to our ego, unable to break outWe fear every difference, things that feel strange(“The Shooting Star”)

•

“Cursed, cursed Creator! Why did I live?”

•(Frankenstein)

(Emo vs. Goth…)

The Gothic Novel: It really was a

dark and stormy night…• “tales of macabre, fantastic and

supernatural, usually set amid haunted castles, graveyards, ruins and picturesque landscapes.” (Oxford Companion to English Literature)

• Gothic Novels were the very height of fashion in the late 1790’s and early 1800’s

• The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole: 1784)• “…a sudden gust of wind, that met her at the door,

extinguished her lamp and left her in total darkness.”• “While the prince was in this suspense, a confused noise of

voices echoes through the distant vaults.”• “…he was persuaded that he could know no happiness but

in the society of one, with whom he could forever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.”

The Sublime and the Beautiful

• Edmund Burke's theories expressed in his essay A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.In his essay he distinguishes the concept of the Sublime which he associated with vastness ,strength, gloom, and fear, and the Beautiful which he associated with harmony, delicateness, pleasure.

• He stated that "terror was a source of the Sublime", "quell'orror bello che attristando piace" as the Italian poet Pindemonte described it.

Gothic Elements•Atmosphere to Create Mood …

Arctic cold and ice, bleak Alpine fields, craggy rock faces, expanses of land that open to a raging sea, etc

•Spiritual and Social Isolation: refers to both Creator (Victor Frankenstein) and Created (The Creature)

Gothic Elements, Cont.

• Gothic Heroes (?): trapped in gloom and brooding…unable to detect the light of day…

• Emphasis on the Supernatural: things beyond the known realm of science; the paranormal; the use of the doppelganger or double

And so…• It was on a dreary night of

November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs…

“I Have now no friend…Oh, how alone!...no eye answers

mine…”

Shall we begin??