Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

elements—and its Preface, where the author justifies his use of what was perceived as
“low” and contemptible devices. Of “Hart-Leap Well” for example, Gamer observes that
“in many ways, the poem is almost duplicitous in the way it allows both Wordsworth and
his readers first to indulge in the supernatural speculation of low and rustic characters and
then to ally themselves with a more philosophical and chastened interpretation of the
same events” (14). To some extent, this calls in the same notions of distinction between
terror and horror that was pointed out earlier in the comparison between Lewis and
Radcliffe; whereas, in the case of the Lyrical Ballads the “supernatural” is used to
produce the same type of “intellectual speculation” that Radcliffe assumed terror to
produce.
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On a different level, critical theories such as psychoanalysis, reader-response, and
feminism have considerably influenced the ways in which Gothic texts are approached.
Perhaps most notably, psychoanalysis has provided the most insightful ways of reading
the Gothic to unleash its discursive possibilities. For example, by using the theories of
psychoanalysis, the reader can unveil certain patterns of social, political, and cultural
repression as they may situate themselves in the narrator and/or his/her characters. On
the other hand, one cannot stress enough the considerable contributions of Freud’s theory
of the “Uncanny,” which examines the properties of a text that provoke a feeling of
unfamiliarity and uneasiness, which is possibly disturbing, unsettling, and uncomfortable,
as it successively reveals certain patterns of repression and exerts directive power of the
reader by strongly affecting his/her response. In The Monk, the uncanny manifests itself
on various levels: in the disclosure of horrific evens, such as the description of putrefied
bodies and sanguinary beatings cited above; second, in the premise that the supernatural