Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

described exclusively “as a genre … [but] as an aesthetic (Miles), as a great repressed of
romanticism (Bruhm and William Patrick Day), as a poetics (Williams), as a narrative
technique (Hallberstam and Punter), or as an expression of changing or “extreme”
psychological or socio-political consciousness (Bruhm, Cox, Halberstam, Monleon,
Paulson, Richter, Williams)” (28). Perhaps the most compelling notions are the
considerations that the Gothic has influenced Romanticism in major ways and has served
as a bridge between different traditions. In considering that the rise of the Gothic
occurred when the neo-classical period was gradually being effaced, Napier suggests that
“the genre could offer a clue to the emergence of a romantic view” (xi) and refers to
various critics 14 who have considered how the Gothic influenced Romanticism: “Since
the 1960s, critics have tended to adhere to the notion that Gothic fiction provides a link
between a classical age and a Romantic one through its exploration of human emotions
and dreads” (xii). But perhaps the most compelling observations regarding the influence
of the Gothic are those pointed out by Gamer in his book Romanticism and The Gothic.
In parallel with an earlier observation, he argues that the division between Gothic and
Romantic is due primarily to “economic and ideological processes that have insured their
lasting separation,” by referring to the work of twentieth-century critics such as Anne
Williams who point out the similarities between the Gothic and Romantic traditions and
by referring to several Romantic works that were either heavily influenced by the Gothic
and/or borrowed extensively from it 15 (10-11). To illustrate this point, he draws from
Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads—and especially the poems that contain “supernatural”
14 Such as Masao Miyoshi, Elizabeth MacAndrew, and Judith Wilt.
15 See for example, Coleridge’s “Christabel,” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Baillie’s De Monfort
Wordsworth’s “Fragment of a Gothic Tale.”
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