In the 20th century, the aesthetic genre known as Gothic became very popular in at least two main circumstances: in the 1920s, with the appearance of the expressionist cinema, and in the 1980s, with the so-called post-punk rock or gothic rock, which had bands like Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy. However, the Gothic genre dates back to the second half of the 18th century, the so-called “Century of Enlightenment” or “Century of Reason”. We know that this genre of narratives deals with themes that, in general, involve horror, the supernatural, the atmosphere of mystery, crime and obscurity. Why was such a narrative genre born precisely at the time of the Enlightenment, a movement of ideas that was exactly in the opposite direction to these themes?
Like romanticism, the Gothic genre should be understood as a reaction to the overconfidence of the Enlightenment rationalism, in the belief that Reason was capable of solving all the problems in the world and leading humanity to a state of earthly “Perfection”. Thus, while romanticism appealed to imagination, sensibility and passions, Gothic appealed to atmosphere of the supernatural, of crime, of perversion, of curses, of everything that concerned the evil in man.
Europe's medieval past was also an essential element in Gothic narratives, especially because of the the presence of ruined castles, monasteries and mansions of the former nobility surrounded by shady forests and terrifying. The first Gothic novels that followed this line were Otranto Castle(1764), by Horace Walpole, the monk (1796), by Matthew Lewis,the visionary (1789), by Schiller, and the mysteries of udolfo(1794) by Ann Radcliffe. The Gothic horror actually began with Walpole's novel, which was published on Christmas Eve 1764 and about which researcher Robert Mighall makes the following remarks:
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His story of ghosts, omens, family curses, and strange supernatural occurrences was written in part as farce and presented as a medieval manuscript ''discovered'' by an 18th century antiquarian and offered as a curiosity to the modern readership clarified. Many were fooled by Walpole's trick and many also enjoyed the new experience of reading texts associated with legends. folklore and chivalry novels in the pages of a modern work, a genre more concerned with current and everyday events, the believable and the realist. [1]
The form of organization of the narrative of Otranto Castle, as Mighall rightly observed, had the merit of causing doubt in the public of “enlightened readers”, that is, the same public that consumed the books and pamphlets of the Enlightenment philosophers. The whole atmosphere of hallucination and spectrality (ghost apparitions, etc.) had been clothed by Walpole in a realistic and reliable garb.
This same technique was followed in the nineteenth century by authors reportedly affiliated with Gothic narratives, such as like Edgar Alan Poe, ETA Hoffmann and Robert Louis Stevenson, but it can also be seen in novels like: Melmoth the wanderer(1820), by Charles Maturin, Hill of windshowling(1847), Emily Bronte, and Dracula, by Bran Stocker, (1897).
GRADES
[1] MIGHALL, Robert. "Introduction". In: STEVENSON, Robert Louis. the doctor and the monster. São Paulo: Penguin Classics/Companhia das Letras, 2015. P. 19.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
