Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

‘Gothic’, as an ethnic and a cultural concept, of course originates in Europe, and manuals of European history tell us that Gothic settlement developed from the east to the south and west. If anything, however, it remains more popularly associated with the north. Leaving aside here detailed considerations of the exact pre-medieval, medieval and architectural connotations of'Gothic’, the cultural revival of the term, particularly in a literary sense, is generally viewed as developing in a reverse direction, from west to east. Certainly, what is now regarded as the Gothic novel, together with the allied phenomenon of'graveyard poetry’, stems from eighteenth-century England. The eastward spread, however, soon mingled with kindred local currents and a process of cross-fertilisation ensued, embracing structure, style, setting, themes and common sources. A reverse wind quickly wafted the fashion back to England and beyond, to Ireland and America, as well as back again to eastern Europe, from where certain themes, such as that of the ‘undead’, appear to have originated.The political, social, cultural and religious anxieties of the eighteenth century were felt Europe-wide (indeed, northern hemisphere-wide) and paraded themselves across the entire continent more or less simultaneously. Consequently, in the view of the Marquis de Sade, ‘It was therefore necessary [for writers] to call upon ... log in or subscribe to read full text