Features of Romantic, Gothic, and Satiric Writing (starting
points):
Romanticism (Burch, Kim, Clark, Balkcom)
* Self-revelation
* Poet as a prophet/ the importance of
spiritual autobiography (e.g. The Prelude,
“Tintern Abbey”)
* Romantic Lyric—the speaker closely connected to
the poet’s own experience
2.
Celebration of Childhood
* Innocence as a
virtue
* Rebellion against
the role of reason in the Enlightenment; non-directive (Rousseauist)
ideas about education
3.
Imagination
* “The life of
imagination was more real to [Blake] than the material world”
(Keynes 11).
* “Imagination as a critical authority
(which permitted freedom from classical
notions of form in art).”
(wikipedia.org). : on the issue of form, see STC on “Organic
form”
4.
Passion
> Reason
* Wordsworth—“spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings.”
* Coleridge—“composing poetry involves
the psychological contraries ‘of
passion
and of will, of spontaneous impulse and of voluntary purpose.”
(Abrams 9).
5.
Nature
* Nature corresponds to an inner or spiritual
world
* Personification of nature
* Man exists in a state of exile from nature and
must return (Romantic tourism, ecology)
6.
Infinite Longing:
Our destiny, our
being’s heart and home,
Is with
infinitude, and only there;
With hope it is,
hope that can never die,
Effort, and
expectation, and desire,
And something evermore
about to be. WW. (The
Prelude 6. 604-08)
* Inaccessible desires
* Insatiable appetites
Gothic
Conventions (Kraus, Womack, Jones, Callaway, Bland)
I. The supernatural
a. The supernatural: Any person,
object, or event that cannot be explained according to natural laws.
b. The explained supernatural:
When people, objects, or events seem to be supernatural to both the reader and
literary characters, but are eventually shown to have realistic,
non-supernatural explanations.
II. Anti-Catholicism
a. Anti-Catholicism often surfaces
to highlight themes of greed, corruption, persecution of the innocent,
repression (especially sexual), and abuse of authority.
b. Times (the Inquisition), places
(monasteries, churches), and people (monks, nuns) associated with Catholicism
are often shown as corrupt in the works of Protestant writers.
III. Architecture
a. The term "gothic" was
a description of architecture long before it became a literary genre. Horace
Walpole was the first to use the term in a literary context when he gave his
novel The Castle of Otranto its subtitle:
"A Gothic Story".
b. Gothic works employ a plethora
of architectural entities: castles, dungeons, prisons, underground passages,
labyrinths, dark corridors, winding stairs, convents, monasteries, etc.
c. Gothic architecture's love for
labyrinths and claustrophobic spaces give concrete ways for a writer to show
the psychological issues with which their characters are dealing. Entrapment
becomes a possible theme because of the architectural devices used.
IV. Terror / Horror
a. The gothic author Anne Radcliffe was one of the first to distinguish between
terror and horror as reader responses. She associated terror with
"high" literature and horror with "low" literature.
However, some critics argue that works of horror are simply works of terror
with greater and more graphic description. For more on Radcliffe's
ideas, see "On the Supernatural in Poetry".
b. Terror: Works of terror are
generally obscure when dealing with events - both in the description and
perception of what is occurring. These works encourage the reader/character to
discover a plausible and rational explanation for the event. When an explanation
is discovered, the terror dissipates and a means of escape can be found.
c. Horror: Works of horror appeal
not to the intellect, but to more immediate physical and mental reactions such
as fear, shock, revulsion, and disgust. These reactions are induced by detailed
descriptions. There can be no rational explanation for the events and the
inability to find such resolution causes an unending feeling of obscure fear.
V. Foreign Lands / Journey / The
a. Gothic tales are often placed
in foreign landscapes to add to the exotic nature of the atmosphere, transport
characters from routine life, and to educate readers about foreign lands.
b. The journeys to and from places
can be just as important as foreign scenery.
c. The late night ride is also an
important convention in the same vein. Often the journey must be concluded
before daybreak. The journey most often ends at a real location where a
dramatic scene is set to begin, or at a supernatural place (such as at the
gates of death or hell).
VI. Pursued Protagonist / Heroine
a. Pursued Protagonist: The male
protagonist is pursued by a force that causes negative acts to occur to and
because of that character. The two main reasons for the violent force can be a
curse or predetermined damnation caused by a real or imagined wrong carried out
by the protagonist or his family.
b. Pursued Heroine: Females are
often pursued by a more physical force: an older, evil aristocrat or a similar
male authority figure. The heroine is usually young, virtuous, idealistic,
beautiful, and artistically inclined. The man is most often a threat to the
young woman's virginity, but can be equally threatening to her other ideals and
morals. The pursuit can be either literal or figurative.
VII. The villain - hero
a. A character who is portrayed as
a hero at the beginning of a work, but is later revealed to be a villain.
b. A character who is in fact a
villain, but who possesses heroic qualities that encourage the reader to
sympathize with him. Such heroic qualities can include a tragic past, a
charismatic personality, a curse beyond his control, etc.
Works Cited
“The Black Canon of Elmham; or, Saint
Edmond’s Eve.” Tales
of Terror. Bulmer and
Lewis,
Matthew Gregory. The Monk. [
Poe, Edgar
Allan. "The Fall
of the House of Usher." The Complete
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.
Random House:
“Satire
is a mode of challenging accepted notions by making them seem ridiculous. It usually occurs only in an age of crisis, when
there exists not absolute uniformity but rather two
sets of beliefs. Of the two sets of
beliefs, one holds sufficient power to suppress open attacks on the established
order, but not enough to suppress a veiled attack” –Jacob Bronowski
SATIRE – a literary technique
of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject to ridicule, often
as an intended means of provoking or preventing change.
Modes of Address
Direct/Formal: Usually in the first person, direct satire
addresses the reader or a specific character in the satire.
Indirect: The voice of indirect satire is expressed
through a third person fictional narrative.
The actions and words of the characters reveal the satirized message.
Types of
Satire
Horatian Satire: Name comes from the satires written by Horace, which are exemplary of the form. Seeks primarily to amuse,
allowing the reader to laugh with the target. Is more generally amused at the human race than at specific targets. Is tolerant, amused, enlightened and unreservedly comic, and is more likely to present a "satiric norm," depicting how the world should be.
Satiric Norm: The corrective behavior or acceptable norm that is presented in Horatian Satire.
Juvenalian Satire: Name refers to the satires of Juvenal. Seeks to create outrage, and cause the reader to laugh at the target.
Is most commonly focused on specific individuals or groups. Is less likely to present a definite, positive solution. Is moral, angry, concerned and according to Juvenal ultimately tragic.
Burlesque: A form
of satire that creates a comedy from a serious or trivial matter by using a
style that is incongruous with the subject. High burlesque elevates a low
subject to a high status, while low burlesque diminishes the significance of a
high subject.
Travesty: form of low burlesque. Mocks
a particular work by treating its lofty subject in a grotesquely undignified
manner and style.
Bathos (anticlimax): form of low burlesque. Writer’s deliberate
drop from serious and elevated to the trivial and lowly in order to achieve
comic or satiric effect.
Mock Heroic: form of high burlesque. A satiric style which sets up a disproportionate and witty distance between the elevated
language used to describe an action and the triviality or foolishness of the action. Parody: refers to a style which deliberately seeks to ridicule or tribute another style. This may involve simply offering up a
silly version of the original or imitating the original, pushing it beyond its limits and making it ridiculous. Usually about very influential literary works.Irony: a stylistic device or figure of
speech in which the real meaning of the words is different from (and opposite
to) the literal
meaning. Irony, unlike sarcasm, tends to be ambiguous,
bringing two contrasting meanings into play.
Invective: usually
in Juvenalian Satire, invective describes very
abusive, usually nonironical language aimed at a
particular
target (e.g., a
string of curses or name calling). Invective can often be quite funny (e.g., in
inventive of the satirist's tools. A lengthy invective
is sometimes called a diatribe. The danger of pure invective is that one can
quickly get tired of
it, since it offers limited opportunity for inventive wit.
Caricature: refers
to the technique of exaggerating for comic and satiric effect one particular
feature of the target, to achieve a
grotesque or
ridiculous effect.
Reductio ad absurdum: is a
popular satiric technique (especially in Swift), whereby the author agrees
enthusiastically with the
basic attitudes or
assumptions he wishes to satirize and, by pushing them to a logically
ridiculous extreme, exposes the
foolishness of the original attitudes and assumptions.
Lampoon:
a harsh and personal attack on a recognizable target which focuses
on the target’s character or appearance.
Persiflage:
light-hearted bantering.