The Term “Gothic” in the 1790’s, Early 1800’s
(in progress)
In her important essay “The Genesis of Gothic Fiction,” E.J. Clery writes that “when determining what is distinctive or innovative about eighteenth-century fiction in the terror mode [the term “Gothic”] is essentially a red herring. During the 1790’s the mode acquired a number of categorizing names, none of them involving “Gothic” (22). While Clery is right to sound a note of caution about historical usage of the term, there do exist some contemporary references to the literature of terror as “Gothic” in the 1790’s and early 1800’s. This page collects some of these references, not so much in order to refute Clery’s claim but to study what the use of the term “Gothic” says about contemporary understanding of the genre. Red asterisks provide historical and literary contexts for the passages.
From
Thomas James Mathias, The Shade of Alexander Pope on the Banks of the
T.J.
Mathias is chiefly remembered today as the author of The Pursuits of
Literature (1797) and, in Gothic circles, for that work’s vicious
attack on M.G. Lewis’s The Monk. This lesser known work of his provides
a valuable example of how and why conservative political and literary
commentators viewed Gothic literature as culturally subversive. Inspired by the
Irish parliamentarian Henry Grattan’s Letter to the Citizens of Dublin (1797)
and its argument against the increasing encroachment of the English monarchy
upon Irish affairs, the satire begins with a stinging attack on Grattan as a
sophist and Jacobin sympathizer but then, in a fashion characteristic of
Mathias, turns to deplore the decadent and unskilled literary productions of
the period, with his champion, Alexander Pope, providing the caustic
commentary. The brief passage below nicely epitomizes the anti-Jacobin reading
of the Gothic in three ways: 1) it suggests that by 1799 the term Gothic (in
Mathias, “Gothick” [230]) had come to serve as a generic marker for drama and
novels with ghostly and Germanic materials; 2) it directly links the
"German school" to Jacobin rule; 3) the second note to the passage
below defines that linkage, in the way many Gothic works champion the lower
classes set against a depiction of the "higher ranks of society" as
"vicious and profligate." The two footnotes come from Mathias's
heavily annotated work.
Mark next, how fable, language, fancy flies
To Ghosts, and Beards, and Hoppergollop's [1] cries:
Lo,
from th' abyss, unmeaning Spectres drawn,
The Gothick glass, blue flame, and flick'ring lawn !
Choak'd
with vile weeds, our once proud
When novels die, and rise again as plays:
No Congress props our Drama’s falling state,
The modern ultimatum is “Translate.”
Thence sprout the morals of the German school;
The Christian sinks, the Jacobin bears rule:
No virtue shines, but in the peasant’s mein,
No vice, but in patrician robes, is seen; [2]
Through
four dull acts the Drama drags, and drawls,
The fifth is stage-trick, and the Curtain falls. (227-240)
Mathias’
Notes:
1. See an admirable piece
of ridicule on the German nonsense of the day, by a man of parts and wit, in a
pamphlet entitled, " My Night-gown and Slippers; or, Tales in Verse,
written in an Elbow-chair, by George Colman the younger." (Printed for
Caddell, 1797.) It is called, The Maid of the Moor; or, the Water. Fiend.
concerning Lord Hoppergollop's Country House. But I would refer with still
greater pleasure, and with the most decided approbation, to “The Rovers, or the
Double Arrangement,” a Drama in the German style, in the Anti-Jacobin, or
Weekly Examiner, No. 30 and 31. A WORK which has been of signal service to the
publick, by the union of wit, learning, genius, poetry, and sound politicks.
2. The modern
productions of the German stage, which silly men and women are daily
translating, have one general tendency to Jacobinism. Improbable plots,
and dull scenes, bombastick and languid prose alternately, are their least
defects. They are too often the licensed vehicles of immorality and licentiousness,
particularly in respect to marriage; and it should be remarked in the strongest
manner, that all good characters are chiefly and studiously drawn from the
lower orders ; while the vicious and profligate are seldom, if ever,
represented but among the higher ranks of society, and among men of property
and possessions. This is not done without design. It is indeed time to consider
a little, to what and to whom we give our applause, in an hour of such general
danger as the present. The Stage surely has the most powerful effect on the
publick mind. The Author of The School for Scandal, with the purest and most
patriotick intentions, long ago endeavoured to make dishonesty, gambling,
cheating, deep drinking, debauchery, and libertinism, appear amiable and
attracting in his character of Charles Surface; and the German Doctors of the
sock and buskin are now making no indirect attacks on the very fundamentals of
society and established government, subordination, and religious principle ;
the vaunt-couriers of French anarchy, national plunder, and GENERAL MISERY.
From
the “Introductory Dialogue” of Tales of
Terror (Anonymous).
My
mind unalter’d views, with fix’d delight,
The
wreck of learning snatch’d from Gothic night;
Chang’d
by no time, unsettled by no place,
It
feels the Grecian fire, the Roman grace;
Exulting
marks the flame of ancient days,
In
Yet still the soul for various
pleasure form’d,
By
Pity melted, and by Terror storm’d,
Loves
to roam largely through each distant clime,
And
“leap the flaming bounds of space and time!”[1]
The
mental eye, by constant lustre tires,
Forsakes,
fatigued, the object it admires,
And,
as it scans each various nation’s doom,
From
classic brightness turns to Gothic gloom. (59-72)
From
Thomas Gray’s “The Progress of Poetry: A Pindaric Ode” (1757), referring to
[1]
From Thomas Gray’s “The Progress of Poetry: A Pindaric Ode” (1757), referring
to