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| Historical Information |
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London during the time of Ann Radcliffe
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England in the nineteenth century was undergoing great changes. The unbanization of socitey awasa mojor factor tant influenced the success of Ann Radcliffe's writing. She dealt with many o f the problems that came along with unbanization in her writiings such as: the rise of prostitution, unemployment, and lack of health care and educational institutions. Thought there were advancements in medicine ( Pasteur) and in public waste systems which were making city life more bearable, The family at this time was also become a more affectinate and loving unionm but classes were still divided. The rich were becoming richer and the poorer were becomeing poorer. Ann and her husbad being a part of the working or middle class suffered form the indescrepencies.
Durin this time the role of women was beginning to change and they were finding sexual freedom. Ann deals with this in her writing about women as " unsexed" .The literary canon wasbeing expanded to include the works of women and it was not longer as common for women to write under false names. The feminism movement was beginning among working class women, in which Ann was an active participant. The expansion of scientific pursuit and the Age of Reason was a dominant and revolutionary phenomenon at this time as well and the trend toward secular thinging was expaning .This made the content in Ann's novel more acceptable to thsoe whe were living in the increasingly modern society in London and in the rest of Europe. Comte and Marx were two of the most popular thinkers of the time and Social Darwinism was becoming a more prominent influence."Literary realism, fascinated by scientific laws, ordinary people, and urban problems, fully reflected the spirit of the age."
-http://www.fresno.k12.ca.us/schools/s090/lloyd/life_%26_times_19th_century.htm
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Divisions in Gothic literature of the 19th century:
" There is a clear critical division that exists in the Gothic, between the Canonical and trade, the first being an indicator of the genre's critical success and reception, the other dismissed as not really belonging to the genre by an act of assessment which assimilates the popular to the literary, and finds it disreputable. The modern critical view of the Gothic limits it to a set of high reaching artistic achievements: Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796), Ann Radcliffe's The Italian; or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) are constantly cited as defining the genre. But this view largely excludes the question of whether those novels unashamedly produced as part of a lucrative business or trade Gothic can be admitted, either as a legitimate literary category, or even as a contribution to the life of the genre. Many of the most fashionable and popular Gothic novels were written by writers who turned out works as part of a profitable business. Authors such as Sarah Wilkinson, Francis Lathom, William Ireland, William Child Green and Louisa Stanhope produced most of the best selling novels, chapbooks and short tales of terror, often selling more and gaining more critical acclaim than the 'canonical' writers, but are largely forgotten today.
Undoubtedly, the most condemned offspring of the Trade Gothic, chapbooks or bluebook are considered by some to be not only 'low quality Gothic fiction', but the 'corrupted form' of the Gothic', the 'disposable rubbish of a subliterate body of literature' whose 'publication and commercial value stand as an index of the sensation-craze into which the Gothic vogue degenerated iin its declining years.' " |
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The Gothic Canon:
"The modern critical view of the Gothic canon limits it to a set of high reaching artistic achievements: Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), Ann Radcliffe's The Italian; or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) are cited as the defining parameters of the genre.
Although the Gothic novel influenced many of the emerging genres, like romanticism, the outpouring of Gothic novels started to ease by 1815 and with the publication of Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820 ,the genre began to fade. The Gothic novel had come full circle, from rebellion to the Age of Reasons order, to its encompassing and incorporation of Reason as derived from terror. The influence of the Gothic novel is felt today in the portrayal of the alluring antagonist, whose evil characteristics appeal to ones sense of awe, or the melodramatic aspects of romance, or more specifically in the Gothic motif of a persecuted maiden forced apart from a true love.
The Gothic genre today has remained an elusive minor literary upheaval that has had immense influence on genres today. Literary critics though, have been slow to accept Gothic literature as a valuable genre. The first critics to examine the Gothic, approached it reverently with historical interest. They tried to rescue it, to revive the dead and obscure genre. These critics looked at the presence of the text by examining it within a historical context. The original critical approach of historical interpretation allowed the text to validate the text, as it was a reaction to the age of reason, order, and politics of Eighteenth century England.
The development of the Gothic Novel from the melancholy overtures of sentimental literature to the rise of the sublime in the graveyard poets had a profound impact on the budding Romantic movement from Wordsworth to Shelley. The astounding features and use of the sublime and the overt use of the supernatural, profoundly influenced the style and material of the emerging romantics. Gothic Novels such as The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett, Longsword, Earl of Salisbury by Thomas Leland, The Old English Baron: A Gothic Story by Clara Reeve and Vathek: An Arabian Tale by William Beckford led Coleridge to write a Gothic drama, Shelley to write two Gothic Novels and Byron to write Manfred.
The effects of the Gothic still reverberate though modern literature from Joyce Carol Oats to Ann Rice. The literary motifs set forth by Horace Walpole can be found scattered throughout all forms of literature, yet the Gothic Novel has been left to molder in libraries in obscurity and except in rare instances, the novel has all but vanished from the canon of western literature. "
-http://www.victorianlinks.com/links/Literature/Gothic/
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