Gothic Novel

Using a prototypical character from ancient times was an aspect that Romantic authors tried to avoid. However, Mary Shelley created on his most well-known novel, Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus (1818), what it seems to be a completely new character based on a mythological hero, Prometheus. With her novel, Shelley did not only created an original character but also influenced in the 19 th century horror novel that would develop from Romantic literature features. The purpose of this essay is to detect the similitudes and differences between the personality of Shelley's character and the original one. By a descriptive analysis of Prometheus' and doctor Frankenstein's stories and personalities has been found a direct correlation between these two characters. Moreover, various differences between them can be distinguished, which gives to Mary Shelley's story originality. Following the characteristic gloomy and dark features of the Gothic novel, Shelley gave life to a protagonist who happens to be a rebellious hero that would be haunted until his death as well as a new kind of villain, the monster. The study answers the question regarding how much Shelly based her own novel on the mythological character and the aspects that draw them near and away from each other. Further studies are needed to clarify new doubts that have arisen while the research of this essay, such as the dependence of the monster's cruelty to its creator attitude or the apparition of the monster as a typical character in horror novels.

The latest novel by Sarah Waters, published in 2009, received critical acclaim for its realistic representation of post-war Britain, its affiliation with great gothic classics, such as The Turn of the Screw or The Fall of the House of Usher, and above all, its ambiguous ending. However, it is a bit of a ‘shorthand’ to call the novel gothic, as has been admitted by the author herself in a video interview taken by Rebecca Lovell in May 2009. Instead, Waters calls the book ‘a haunted house novel.’ The unanswered question of the novel is, what is it that haunts Hundreds Hall? The proposed paper makes an attempt to provide one possible answer to this question, focusing on the idea of transgression. Of course in any gothic work of fiction the occurrence of a supernatural element signals a crossing of the borderline between the possible and the impossible. A fantastic entity questions the stability of this frontier. In Waters’ novel, however, the transgression of the real signals another crossing of boundaries. The unreliable narrator of the novel is the crux of its interpretation. The enigmatic events in the house coincide with Dr Faraday’s growing attachment to the Ayres family. He is an educated man who, on one hand, no longer belongs to the working class of his parents, but still, due to his origins, feels insecure in the upper class to which the inhabitants of Hundreds Hall belong. His constant roaming of the class boundaries holds the key to the haunting mystery. The paper is going to analyse different images and symbols of transgression in the novel to show the connection between the issue of class and the gothic elements in the novel and to provide a possible interpretation of its equivocal ending.

Most critical appreciations of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817) are typically concentrated upon the author's parody and subtle criticism of contemporary popularity of Gothic fiction in Britain. Austen's attack on English Gothic writers in the novel is based on her explicit conviction about the appropriateness of southern, Catholic Europe as setting for unnatural horrors, and the corresponding inappropriateness of a Protestant England and the English social reality of her age as settings for this mode of fiction writing. Notwithstanding the inappropriateness and prejudiced nature of this assumption, the historicity of Northanger Abbey does not stem only from its communication with contemporary fiction writing practice. In view of Austen's deliberate emphasis on certain codes of behavior, social values, tropes, and concepts, her Gothic parody can also be read as the expression of a nationalistically idealized and " imagined community " of the English middle-class, fuelled by the socio-cultural context of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Accordingly, this paper will discuss how Austen constructs, sometimes at the expense of distorting facts, a Protestant middle-class English " Self " as opposed to an alien, Catholic, European " Other " by conflating her theory of fiction writing and her " simulation " of English national identity in Northanger Abbey.

The Castle of Otranto was a pioneering work: the second edition was the first piece of literary work to include ‘a Gothic story’ in its title, and it is frequently held up as the first in a long line of Gothic novels. Literary scholars have afforded it significant attention, but little has been written about Otranto’s engraved illustrations, first incorporated in the sixth, 1791, edition. This essay examines how the novel was visualised in Georgian engravings, and questions whether they present a castle that we can immediately recognise, to use Walpole’s phrase, as a ‘child of Strawberry [Hill]’, his Gothic villa.

Resumen: El presente estudio tiene como objetivo analizar la construcción del modo gótico en la novela La mort i la primavera, de Mercè Rodoreda, quien, basándose en su personalísima praxis estética, plantea la enigmática atracción que ejerce lo extraño y lo desconocido. El gótico rodorediano —construido como una composición multiangular, donde un amplio espectro de simbología tiene cabida— oculta una doble intencionalidad: por un lado, (des)marcar lo excéntrico y, por otro, vislumbrar la relación marginal con la sociedad hegemónica, contraponiendo las convenciones realistas e investigando nuevas dimensiones de lo imaginario. De dicha configuración poliédrica se discierne el gótico de La mort i la primavera como una experiencia que se revela a un mismo tiempo matriz y abismo; abriendo así un espacio donde confluyen vida y muerte, creación y destrucción. Y entonces se descubre, desde los territorios de lo insólito, la inquietante y asombrosa naturaleza del ser humano.

Palabras clave: gótico, horror, identidad, subversión, simbolismo.

Resum: L’objectiu principal del present estudi és l’anàlisi de la construcció del mode gòtic en la novel·la La mort i la primavera, de Mercè Rodoreda, qui, tot basant-se en la seva praxi estètica tan personal, planteja l’enigmàtica atracció que desperta tot allò que és estrany i desconegut. El gòtic rodoredià —construït com una composició multiangular, en què es fa palès un espectre de simbologia ben ampli— amaga una intencionalitat doble: d’una banda, (des)marcar l’excèntric i, d’una altra, entreveure la relació marginal amb la societat hegemònica, tot contraposant les convencions realistes i investigant noves dimensions de l’imaginari. D’aquesta configuració polièdrica es discerneix el gòtic de La mort i la primavera com una experiència que es revela alhora matriu i abisme; s’obre així un espai on conflueixen vida i mort, creació i destrucció. I és aleshores que es descobreix, des dels territoris de l’insòlit, la naturalesa inquietant i esbalaïdora de l’ésser humà.

Mots clau: gòtic, horror, identitat, subversió, simbolisme.

Abstract: The present study’s aim is to analyse the construction of the Gothic mode in the novel La mort i la primavera by Mercè Rodoreda, who, on the basis of an extremely personal aesthetical practice, examines the enigmatic attraction exerted by both the uncanny and the unknown. Rodoredian Gothic —a multiangular composition in which a broad symbolic spectrum finds its own place— hides a twofold intentionality: on the one hand, its purpose is to (de)limit the eccentric and, on the other hand, it pursues to envisage the marginal relationship with the hegemonic society, by means of countering the realist conventions, and by investigating the new dimensions of the imaginary. It is from this polyhedral structure that La mort i la primavera’s Gothic is seen as an experience which reveals itself as simultaneously matrix and abysm; thus opening up a space of confluence between life and death, creation and destruction. It is there when, from the unwonted’s territory, the disquieting and amazing nature of the human is unveiled.

Key Words: Gothic, horror, identity, subversion, symbolism.

This paper is divided into three parts. The first part of the paper focuses on the analysis of science as 'monstrous' and the monstrous enterprise taken by Frankenstein in order to give birth to the creature. The second part of the paper focuses on Mary Shelley's reinterpretation of the 'patriarchal myth'. Frankenstein is a commentary on Paradise Lost. It also focuses on the comparison of the creature to Adam and Satan. The final part of the paper focuses on the search of the 'monster' in the novel Frankenstein. It shows how the novel provides a critique of imperialism. It will focus on the circumstances because of which a physically hideous creature became the revengeful monster. Victor Frankenstein had to undertake a very monstrous enterprise in order to give birth to the creature. Frankenstein visited charnel houses for collecting the bones of the future body of the creature. He alienated himself both physically and emotionally by keeping his workshop in a " solitary chamber " (Shelley 37). David Punter in his essay " Gothic and Romanticism " says, Frankenstein considered himself as a " pure enquirer after truth " (Punter 277). Frankenstein is overconfident. He suffers from an overwhelming pride. But, still, there is a difference between

The aim of the following work is to explore how the concept of ‘Nature’ appears in 19th Century English literature by comparing the different uses that both Romantic poets and Gothic novelists made of it. Due to the fact that Nature is a recurrent thematic element in several literary movements, this work will focus on the notion that the 19th Century English authors had of it and, thus, how they depicted this vision of Nature in their literary works in an unprecedented way. Two main parts of analysis are proposed: the first one focuses on the concept of ‘Nature’ in the English Romantic poetry, whilst the second one refers to its use in the Gothic novel. Both parts consist of brief analyses of different literary excerpts that are compared between them in order to appreciate the similarities and differences in the ways in which Nature was conceived by different poets and novelists of this period.

Fear is a basic reaction to a danger signal which is deeply rooted in any living individual’s brain. Hence, ‘being horrified’ as an emotional state should have an overall bad connotation, yet frightening content of any sort enjoys great popularity in pop culture, being depicted in all kind of media. People like getting shocked. From the Gothic Novel over horror movies of various subgenres to shocking videogames, being exposed to horror has always been fascinating for the human brain. Especially over the last decade, with rapidly developing technical possibilities, games provided a new and notably different approach to experiencing fear by, unlike literature or movies, actively involving the recipient. The most common type, and at the same time pioneer for horror portrayed in video games, is the genre of the Survival Horror. Even though there are numerous horror games, game studies seem to solely focus on this subgenre. There are nearly no reliable sources analyzing other horror game categories that emerged over the years - and even the research on survival horror is rather restricted to the two biggest and most popular game series in the franchise, namely Silent Hill and Resident Evil, with two existing considerable scientific essays. The focus of those studies lies mostly on fear evoked by monsters and supernatural events although the trend tends towards an establishment of psychological horror in video games. Even though there are notable differences, the resemblance to one of the earliest widely consumed horror medium cannot be denied: the Gothic Novel, or in this special case the Victorian Gothic.
For these reasons, this paper tries to examine the field of psychological horror games and its roots a bit further. It analyzes the first-person gothic walking-simulator “Layers of Fear”, which blends various horror game characteristics with typical Victorian Gothic elements and heavily focuses on story and exploration from the point of view of a psychic painter. Plot-wise, his wife is his muse, but after she is disfigured in a house fire, the artist develops a schizophrenic disorder and is unable to paint. The goal of the game is to create a new magnum opus while exploring the dark past and happenings in the painter’s familiar environment. The game will be examined with regard to the Victorian Gothic narrative and therefore, the paper focuses on the similarities between the two genres in order to get a basic understanding how Layers of Fear evokes Horror.
To get a fundamental overview, the first part of this paper deals with several definitions of fear and how it affects the mind. It then examines how horror is portrayed in literature, using gothic fiction as an example. The focus lies on Victorian gothic. The main part will consist of an analysis of the game “Layers of Fear“ and is divided into two sub-categories which reflect on the everlasting discussion ‘Narratology vs. Ludology’: content and form, frame, game design.  Therefore, on the narration level, recurring Victorian gothic horror-motifs in the game are examined and directly compared to horror elements found in Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, since the novel is the main inspiration source for the aesthetics of the game. Of equal importance regarding horror aspects are game mechanics and design which will also be further explored. To conclude the paper, an outlook for the possible development of horror video games and their ways to trigger fear in the future is presented.  All screenshots used in this paper are taken by myself to support my analysis.

Originally published in 1842 and often referred to as " a Rosicrucian novel, " Zanoni by British literary figure Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton rates as a Victorian thriller, love story, and esoteric philosophical treatise rolled into one. Couched in an elevated literary tone, packed with paranormal happenings, and laced with allusions to facets of the esoteric path well-known to AMORC members, Zanoni rates as high-quality literary entertainment for the esoterically inclined. However, twenty-first century Rosicrucians reading Zanoni for the first time are often bewildered by the stilted authorial tone and unexpected literary features of this nineteenth century novel, a fiction classic beloved by generations of AMORC readers for its colorful portrayal of issues and techniques intimately connected to the Rosicrucian path. This paper renders Zanoni more readily understandable for today's readers by situating it within its historical and literary context in the field of literary genre study. It evaluates three genre categories into which the novel Zanoni might fit. Considering theme, setting, plot, character, dialogue, and narrative voice, the paper demonstrates that this novel employs and embodies the features of three distinct genres: Goth, Silver Fork, and Occult Fiction. Further, the paper reveals how the use of literary conventions drawn from each of these genres provides an opportunity for Bulwer-Lytton to showcase philosophical and spiritual principles advocated by the Rosicrucian Order both in his day and in ours. In sum, this paper provides a comfortable and informed platform from which the reader can enter and enjoy Zanoni. « Zanoni » de Bulwer-Lytton : Une aventure victorienne à l'intérieur de la conscience Par Maureen Richmond, M.A. Résumé Le roman de Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Zanoni (1842) intègre et illustre au moins trois genres importants dans le monde littéraire victorien : 1) le Ghost ou Goth, 2) le genre « à la mode », sentimental, aussi appelé « silver fork » dépeignant les hautes classes de la société, et 3) le roman occultiste. Les caractéristiques de ces genres se marient avec l'intérêt inné de l'auteur pour la métaphysique, l'occultisme, le classicisme, l'idéalisme et la philosophie spirituelle, en un résultat intellectuellement riche qui aborde des questions existentielles, connues depuis toujours, mais qui étaient tout particulièrement à l'étude dans l'Angleterre victorienne. Le message primordial de ce roman est : tandis que la communion avec les mondes spirituels plus élevés ennoblit la conscience humaine, l'effort de se détacher complètement des préoccupations terrestres semble aller à l'encontre la vraie nature de l'homme. L'auteur gère l'intrigue de manière à affirmer la

Matthew Lewis publia en 1795 un roman, 'Le Moine', devenu vite célèbre. Dans une brève introduction, il renvoie à deux légendes qu'il dit avoir utilisée, l'une étant 'La Nonne sanglante'. J'examine d'abord, après un résumé du roman et un bref examen de son contexte culturel, de quelle façon chacune des deux légendes a été mise à profit. Puis je décris comment celle de la Nonne sanglante a été réutilisée dans un opéra de Charles Gounod, dont le livret est dû à Scribe. Enfin, j'engage grâce à ces exemples une réflexion sur les contes tels qu'ils sont racontés à leur point de départ, et la transformation qu'opèrent les littérateurs. L'essai s'accompagne de plusieurs annexes où des textes utiles sont traduits ou résumés.

„Die Maske des roten Todes“ von E. A. Poe handelt von einer aristokratischen Festgesellschaft, welche sich vor einer Pest-Epidemie in einer alten Abtei einschließen lässt, um sich dort, vermeintlich geschützt vor dem draußen wütenden Tod, einem dekadenten Maskenball hinzugeben. Auf typisch fantastische Weise, verschafft sich der Tod in Person schließlich dennoch Zutritt zum Maskenball, sodass ihm schlußendlich der komplette Hofstaat auf qualvolle Weise erliegen muss.
Interessanterweise wurde der Konzeption von Räumlichkeit in Poes Erzählung bisher noch kaum Beachtung geschenkt, obwohl diese dort äußerst detailliert und ausführlich beschrieben wird. So schreitet der Rote Tod auf seinem Weg zum Prinzen Prospero sieben, farblich unterschiedlich gestaltete Zimmer ab.
Der im Rahmen der Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung gehaltene Vortrag, "Writing Worlds. Welten- und Raummodelle der Fantastik" (26.-28.09.2013), widmet sich auf Basis der raumtheoretischen Ansätze Foucaults und Lotmans eben dieser bisher vernachlässigten, aber auffälligen Raumkonzeption in Poes Erzählung „The Masque of The Red Death“.

The article aims to explore how the supernatural is represented in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), arguing that it reflects Radcliffe’s ideas  on  the  matter,  described  in  her  theoretical  work  On  the  Supernatural  in  Poetry(1826). Following Walter Scott’s representation of Radcliffe in his work Lives of the Novelists (1825), her works have been associated with the concept of the explained supernatural. The articles argues that the supernatural present in The Mysteries of Udolpho (179 4) complicates the subjective safety implied by the explained supernatural, a complication visible in the novel’s narrative closure.

George Haggerty's Queer Gothic belongs to the long tradition of treating gothic novels as repositories of case histories for psychoanalysis. In this instance, the Freud of pop psychology has become the Freud of queer theory: Freud filtered through Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. More specifically, homoerotic desire is seen to be the essence of what is repressed for the sake of establishing bourgeois culture, which is "always already" heteronormative.

Fra il 24 dicembre 1764, quando appare a Londra la prima edizione de Il castello di Otranto di Horace Walpole, e il novembre 1831, quando l’editore Bentley manda in stampa l’ultima edizione del Frankenstein di Mary Shelley, si consuma la grande stagione del gotico “classico”. Sono poco meno di settant’anni, ma tanto è bastato per cambiare, e per sempre, la letteratura d’immaginazione: il gotico è la fucina in cui vengono forgiati molti degli incubi che ancora oggi ci perseguitano, dalle pagine dei libri agli schermi del cinema.

Il gotico non è, tuttavia, un fenomeno solo inglese. Contemporaneo della prima rivoluzione industriale, destinato a conoscere il massimo del fulgore negli anni del Terrore giacobino e delle guerre napoleoniche, il gotico è un fenomeno che travalica i confini nazionali, scombinando i generi e le gerarchie e sovvertendo ogni norma del buon gusto. Nel cuore di un’Europa dilaniata, in un’epoca che vede cadere troni e teste coronate, gli eccessi sgangherati della letteratura gotica intercettano le ansie di un mondo in continuo mutamento, nutrendo un’epoca di disincanto con dosi massicce di meraviglia e orrore.

Nell’offrire per la prima volta l’immagine di un gotico europeo, questa guida non intende solo orientare il lettore nei meandri di un genere letterario: tra illusionisti e fantasmagorie, mummie egizie e ritornanti di Serbia, sette segrete ed esperimenti di magnetismo, essa apre uno squarcio sul lato oscuro della modernità, sbirciando nel cono d’ombra che la luce rischiarante della Ragione finisce, inevitabilmente, per proiettare.

""L’appellation « genre frénétique », créée par Charles Nodier en 1821, fait aujourd’hui partie intégrante du vocabulaire des études sur le romantisme. Le genre qu’elle désigne donne cependant lieu à des définitions divergentes, tant au niveau des auteurs qui l’exemplifient qu’au niveau des caractéristiques qui le décrivent. Cette thèse retrace l’histoire du genre frénétique tel qu’il a été défini par la critique, de 1821 à 2010, à partir d’une étude des emplois de l’appellation générique dans un corpus de près de 630 textes critiques.
Dans les années 1820 et 1830, la notion du frénétique revêt une visée polémique dans le cadre du débat sur le romantisme. Alors que Nodier inventait le genre frénétique pour le distinguer du romantisme, de nombreux critiques assimilent au contraire, totalement ou partiellement, les deux notions, l’appellation permettant de décrire le romantisme dans ses dimensions violente et excessive. Après plusieurs décennies où le genre disparaît des lectures du romantisme, le genre « frénétique » est à nouveau convoqué au début du XXe siècle et connaît un succès croissant, qui a pour corollaire une complexification des définitions. Manifestation d’une révolte métaphysique ou transposition littéraire d’un èthos, le « frénétique », qu’il soit jugé favorablement ou non, permet aussi généralement de rendre compte de la vogue, à l’époque romantique, d’un genre horrifique et outrancier, héritier du roman gothique anglais. Ce dernier genre, formé par les romans de Radcliffe, Lewis et Maturin, constitue cependant un corpus hétérogène déterminant deux lignées génériques qui méritent d’être distinguées, le roman noir et le frénétique.

The name of the “Frénétique” genre was created by Charles Nodier in 1821 and is now an integral part of the vocabulary of Romanticism studies. The genre it designates, however, has experienced diverging definitions, both with regards to the authors associated with this genre and the characteristics that describe it. The present thesis traces the history of the genre known as “Frénétique” as defined by critiques from 1821 to 2010, based on a study of the uses of the genre name in a corpus of close to 630 critiques.
In the 1820s and 1830s, the notion of “Frénétique” was used in debates on Romanticism with a polemical purpose. While Nodier invented the “Frénétique” genre so as to distinguish it from Romanticism, numerous critics instead assimilated the two notions in part or in whole —using the “Frénétique” appellation to describe the most violent and excessive dimensions of Romanticism. After disappearing from Romanticism readings for several decades, the “Frénétique” genre emerged again in the early 20th century, when its rising success lead to an increasing complexity of its definitions. The “Frénétique” genre can be the manifestation of a metaphysical revolt, the literary transposition of an èthos, or is generally used to describe the Romantic-era craze for a horrific and excessive genre that inherited its key characteristics from the Gothic Novel. The latter, constituted by the novels of Radcliffe, Lewis and Maturin, spurred two genres that should be distinguished: the French Gothic Novel and the “Frénétique” genre.
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Antinous es la sublime ejecución dramática de una amalgama de estéticas formales.  Se entremezcla la oda lírica con la formalidad de la tragedia clásica y la ambientación romántica.  La ambientación formal y las técnicas dramáticas utilizadas a lo largo de todo el poema corresponden a una estética romántica, mientras que los soliloquios de Adriano responden a una  imitación de la oda clásica.  La presentación del tema de las tres primeras estrofas, donde el autor retoma la historia clásica en su punto álgido, es una técnica típica de Sófocles, mientras que la utilización del suspense es típica de Edgar Allan Poe.
El narrador ha sustituido el cementerio y las ruinas, elementos tópicos del ambiente gótico romántico, por un diván romano; y el rito satánico, por un himno a una presunta necrofilia, pero la tensión del argumento permanece intacta; el poeta continuará utilizando las técnicas de suspense de la novela gótica hasta la catástasis de la estrofa 12, sostenida hasta la estrofa 20.  Para recrear esta técnica, en la que se busca mantener la tensión del argumento, el narrador recurre a la técnica de choque, creando así el impacto inicial, y continúa con un lento juego de persuasión y ambigüedad, revelando y ocultando sólo lo suficiente para despertar la curiosidad en la imaginación del oyente.  Una vez que se ha introducido al lector en el drama y que éste ha sido encuadrado implícitamente en las fiestas bacanales romanas, el narrador se dispone a realizar un sutil, pero efectísimo, juego psicológico, en el que el protagonista es la marioneta de sus deseos, ejecutando las contínuas transgresiones sociales y pecaminosas que el poeta le va dictando.  Este juego, basado en una serie de tríadas formadas por la conmoción, la gradación y el anticlímax, tiene como único objetivo lograr que, durante la catástasis, el lector crea estar asistiendo a una escena de pseudo-necrofilia.

ABSTRACT: During the eighteenth-century, the antagonist, previously the second most important character in a story, becomes, first in Richardson's Clarissa, and then under Gothic influence, the main character in the novel. This recalls the "heavy" villain of Elizabethan drama. The use to which the character is put by the author is both consciously and unconsciously political or ideological, at least in part. Under political influence, the antagonist can be classified as either "repentant " or "unrepentant, " with very different effects, as a New Historicist or Cultural Materialist analysis can reveal. The Gothic antagonist is set within the Gothic novel, and together with other conventions of the Gothic novel became the basis of later interpretations of the Gothic impulse in novels of various sub-genres, from oriental fiction and science fiction to the modern romance novel.

Curial e Güelfa is not a chivalric novel written in the 15th century, but a ‘Gothic’ novel written in the 19th century by its professed discoverer, Manuel Milà i Fontanals. The text reveals a clear portrait of its author: an erudite scholar who had read vastly, from Muntaner’s  Crònica to  Il Novellino, from  Paris e Viana to  Petit Jehan de Saintré; someone familiar with the troubadours Rigaut de Berbezilh and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras; an author who had read, among many other works, Fulgentius’ Mitologiae and Enrique de Villena’s  Glosas de la Eneida; Alfonso de la Torre’s  Visión deleitable, Manrique’s  Verses and  El cortesano by Luis Milán. The concordances with these works make it evident that the book is a composite imitation by the highly erudite Catalan writer. Moreover, they attest to the fact that  Curial e Güelfa can by no means have been written in the 15th century, as no writer could have had all the aforementioned works at his disposal at the time, and it was naturally impossible to read books published after the alleged date of writing of  Curial e Güelfa.

The article aims to explore how the supernatural is represented in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), arguing that it reflects Radcliffe’s ideas on the matter, described in her theoretical work On the Supernatural in Poetry (1826). Following Walter Scott’s representation of Radcliffe in his work Lives of the Novelists (1825), her works have been associated with the concept of the explained supernatural. The articles argues that the supernatural present in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) complicates the subjective safety implied by the explained supernatural, a complication visible in the novel’s narrative closure.

In research on early nineteenth-century Dutch literature, the idea predominates that genres such as the gothic novel and melodrama did not feature, or only seldom featured, in the Netherlands. Only much later would this change, and Dutch melodrama has thus been described as a 'belated phenomenon'. However, is this really the case? We know already that these genres were discussed and read in translation and the example of Van der Hoop's Han van IJsland, a theatrical adaptation of Victor Hugo's debut novel, shows that gothic and melodramatic traditions can also be traced in original texts. Applying Peter Brooks' concept of the 'melodramatic mode' (a mode of 'excess') can be useful when understanding theatrical texts like Van der Hoop's adaptation, but possibly also for other genres.

In 1945 the horror film Isle of the Dead, directed by Mark Robson and starring Boris Karloff, the celebrated Frankenstein of the big screen, introduced the figure of Vrykolakas to cinema audiences, a kind of Greek vampire whose existence and survival, unlike that of his Slavic “cousin”, is less dependent on the consumption of his victims’ blood. The Vrykolakas is active not only at night and can contaminate hearths and homes with its presence. Despite being lumped in with the most famous of vampires with the status of a suspended existence between “undead” and “unliving”, it is in fact more like a hybrid between the god Pan, the harpies and the lamiae of classical antiquity, and sheds light on a little known aspect of age-old Greek folklore: its monstrous disturbing character decidedly in contrast with the exclusively Apollonian image that is often held dear by foreign observers. The Vrykolakas presents itself to the reader in the stories included in this collection in all its terrible power and violence, putting the orderly world of the living to the test. Or perhaps of the living they are a distorting, an aspect that is as true as it is occult? An opportunity to reflect and lose ourselves in the power of great literature, which once again shows us the ideal key to gain access to our souls.

Preface: Alvaro Garcia Marin

The Stories:

    Alexandros Papadiamandis, The Ghost
    Kostas Pasagiannis, The Haunted Castle
    Konstantinos Kazantzis, The Tomb
    Achilleas Paraschos, The Son of Vrykolakas
    Alexandros Moraitidis, Koukkitsa

The human body is a crucial site for the inscription of cultural paradigms. People's bodily characteristics significantly determine and legitimize their social identities. In other words, how people are perceived controls the way they are treated. This nexus between physicality and culture has ...

The latest novel by Sarah Waters, published in 2009, has received critical acclaim for its realistic representation of post-war Britain, its affiliation with great gothic classics, such as The Turn of the Screw or The Fall of the House of Usher, and above all, its ambiguous ending. However, it is a bit of a ‘shorthand’ to call the novel gothic, as has been admitted by the author herself in a video interview taken by Rebecca Lovell in May 2009. Instead, Waters calls the book “a haunted house novel.” The unanswered question of the novel is, what is it that haunts Hundreds Hall? The paper makes an attempt to provide one possible answer to this question, focusing on the idea of transgression. Of course in any gothic work of fiction the occurrence of a supernatural element signals a crossing of the borderline between the possible and the impossible. A fantastic entity questions the stability of this frontier. In Waters’ novel, however, the transgression of the real signals another crossing of boundaries. The unreliable narrator of the novel is the crux of its interpretation. The enigmatic events in the house coincide with Dr Faraday’s growing attachment to the Ayreses family. He is an educated man who, on the one hand, no longer fits into the working class of his parents, but still, due to his origins, feels insecure in the upper class to which the inhabitants of Hundreds Hall belong. His constant roaming of the class boundaries is the key to the haunting mystery. The paper is going to analyse different images and symbols of transgression in the novel to show the connection between the issue of class and the gothic elements in the book and to provide a possible interpretation of its equivocal ending.

espanolEn la obra de Frankenstein convergen tres grandes tradiciones (la judia, la clasica y la cristiana) que tienen un motivo en comun: la trasgresion. Se trata de un tema propio de la tragedia griega que acabo siendo muy prolifico durante el Romanticismo, pues encaja muy bien con el espiritu de libertad que caracteriza la epoca y con la exploracion del mundo irracional, siempre presente en el relato gotico. En paralelo con la tragedia griega, en la novela de Frankensein la trasgresion se desarrolla a partir de un acto de soberbia del hombre ante los dioses, uniendo de este modo los conceptos de mal, trasgresion y tragedia. En este articulo se analizaran las relaciones de Mary Shelley con la tragedia griega, que la autora reinterpreta desde el pensamiento romantico. Para ello se tratara acerca de la presencia de la tradicion clasica en la novela de Shelley y, de manera mas especifica, sobre los contactos con los tres dramaturgos griegos: Esquilo, Sofocles y Euripides. EnglishThree...

The articles focuses on historical novel by E. Sue "Jean Cavalier ou Les fanatiques des Cevennes" (1840) in the context of the evolution of the genre of historical novel of XIX century and the related issue go the formation of popular fiction in the French literature of XIX century.

This article offers an overview on Benedikte Naubert’s translation practice and the way it evolved through the years : while in her first translations the author tended to adhere closely to the originals, her later production presents a growing number of creative traits, which testify to her increased sensibility as a mediator as well as her confidence as a writer. In translation Naubert found a means not only to earn money, but also to hone her literary skills and actively participate in the European cultural exchanges circa 1800. Especially in her later translations Naubert seems to express her will for emancipation as a writer. However, she does not exploit her role as a translator of "female fiction" in order to spread a progressive view on women’s role in society. On the contrary, she occasion- ally inserts passages or short remarks that confirm the gender stereotypes of her time, instead of promoting alternative concepts of femininity. Naubert’s translations may thus be innovative regarding her approach to foreign texts, but they are quite conservative in the portrayal of women and the elaboration of gendered clichés.

Pen & Sword History, 2020.

William Harrison Ainsworth (1805 – 1882) is probably the most successful 19th Century writer that most people haven’t heard of. Journalist, essayist, poet and, most of all, historical novelist, Ainsworth was a member of the early-Victorian publishing elite, and Charles Dickens’s only serious commercial rival until the late-1840s, his novels Rookwood and Jack Shepherd beginning a fashion for tales of Georgian highwaymen and establishing the legend of Dick Turpin firmly in the National Myth. He was in the Dickens’ circle before it was the Dickens’ circle and counted among his friends the literary lions of his age: men like Charles Lamb, J.G. Lockhart, Leigh Hunt, W.M. Thackeray and, of course, Dickens; the publishers Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley; and the artists Sir John Gilbert, George Cruikshank, and ‘Phiz’ (Hablot K. Browne). He also owned and edited Bentley’s Miscellany (whose editorship he assumed after Dickens), the New Monthly Magazine, and Ainsworth’s Magazine. In his heyday, Ainsworth commanded a massive audience until a moral panic – the so-called ‘Newgate Controversy’ – about the supposedly pernicious effects on working class youth of the criminal romances on which his reputation was built effectively destroyed his reputation as a serious literary novelist. As a popular writer and publisher whose life ran the course of the century, from Romantic innocence to Victorian experience, Ainsworth’s story is very much also the story of the development of the English novel, perhaps just as much as that story belongs to Dickens and his other more famous contemporaries. But it is a story rarely told, at least until now.