Introduction

The language of terror is dedicated to an endless expense, even though it only

seeks to achieve a single effect. It drives itself out of any possible resting place. Foucault,
1977.

Gothic means a writing of excess. It appears in the awful obscurity that haunted
XVIII century rationality and morality. It became a shadow in the Romantic idealism and
individualism and the strange duality of Victorian realism and decadence. Gothic
atmospheres have repeatedly signalled the disturbing return of past upon present and
evoked emotions of terror and decadence.
Gothic condenses the many perceived threats to this imaginative excesses and
delusions, religious and human evil, social transgression, mental disintegration and spiritual
corruption. Gothic writing remains fascinated by objects and practices that are constructed
as negative, irrational, immoral and fantastic. In a world since the eighteenth century , has
become increasingly secular , the absence of a fixed religious framework as well as social
and political conditions as meant that Gothic writing and its reception has undergone
cultural boundaries which still produce ambivalent emotions and meanings in their tales of
darkness, desire and power.
Certain features provide the principal embodiments and evocations of cultural
anxieties. Tortuous, fragmented narratives relating mysterious incidents, horrible images
and life-threatening pursuits predominate in the eighteenth century. Spectres, monsters,
demons, corpses, skeletons, evil aristocrats, monks and nuns, fainting heroines and bandits
populate Gothic landscapes as suggestive figures

For the following analysis, three key Gothic novels will be taken as referents: The
Castle of Otranto (1764), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Melmoth the wanderer
(1820). They represent the birth, rise and fall of the Gothic narrative in England and each
one contributes with its own plot and narrative with most of the characteristics that Gothic
genre has.
The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel written by Horace Walpole that is generally
regarded as the first gothic novel. Walpole incorporated into the novel such Romantically
Gothic elements as cursed lords, monks, princesses, romantic love, and haunted castles far
before Gothic literature had become popular. This novel is a medieval tale of love,
knights, horror and curses that features several twists and turns along the way. As the
story opens, there is to be a wedding between the sickly, young son of Prince Manfred,
Conrad, and the lovely Isabella. Isabella's father, Frederick, has been away at the
Crusades. He is presumed to be dead, as is Isabella's mother. Manfred persuades her
guardians to allow her to marry Conrad, who is just 15 years old. It is not a marriage of
love. In the morning of the wedding, a servant finds the chopped up body of Conrad under
a plumed helmet large enough to fit a giant. This horrifying, inciting event sets up the
action to follow.
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by the English writer Anne Radcliff was
extremely popular when it was first published, the work made its author famous throughout
Europe. Readers deeply enjoyed Radcliffs rich description of places and the continuous
dramatic tension throughout the story. She was acknowledged by critics of her time as the
best exponent of the Gothic novel and a pioneer of the Romantic Movement. With
popularity, however, also came several imitators who poorly followed her style. This novel
was sometimes satirised, the most famous example is Jane Austens 1818 novel Northanger
Abbey.
In the novel, Emily St. Albert is orphaned and left to the charge of her aunt whose
new husband, Montoni, obliges both Madame Cheron and Emily to attain his ambitions.
Confined to Montoni's castle di Udolpho, Emily witnesses many supernatural events. After
escaping from Udolpho, Emily returns to France, where eventually all of the mysteries are
explained and she is reunited with her love, Valancourt.
The Mysteries of Udolpho engages with several theoretical ideas which were
fashionable in the 18th century. The concept of the 'sublime' and the 'cult of sensibility'
were very popular in philosophy and literature, and Radcliffe's Gothic employment
conferred upon her narrative a style that would inspire and captivate writers and readers.
Melmoth the wanderer (1820) was written by the Irish Charles Robert Maturin and
it is considered the last of the classic Gothic novels. It tells the adventures of an Irish Faust,
who sells his soul in exchange for a prolonged life. The story is a complex mixture of tales-
within-tales and is set in the early 19th century, when John Melmoth learns the fate of his
ancestor, the title character, by reading a secret document and through his contact with a
Spanish sailor who was tempted by Melmoth and tells of the Wanderers many failed
attempts to win souls for the devil so as to free himself from his own pact. After the stories
are told, the Wanderer himself appears because he has been unable to win any souls in his
150 years of wandering; he asks to be left to his fate. By the next morning, he has
disappeared into the sea.
Melmoth the wanderer is considered the last great Gothic novel mainly because of
the innovative type of narrative that impacted the literary circuits of the time. In fact, its
style points up the importance of details by a continuous shift of narrators and writing
techniques. In terms of the plot, there is a remarkable attack on Roman Catholicism in
favour of Protestantism, which contributes to its influence and popularity.
After this novel, the Gothic genre falls into a swamp of mediocrity and narrative
poverty, the following productions result a mere copy of the emblematic ones, mainly
because of their plot inconsistency and a redundant use of spectral and mysterious features
that scarcely captivated the readers attention. But during the almost 60 years that this
literary work claimed hordes of followers, there were many social and cultural aspects that
were reflected on their pages. The XVIII Century dominant ideology left the reality of
death aside while its pursuit reach absolute progress and a supreme wisdom based on
scientific and totally provable facts, there was no place for any necro-philosophic aspect.
Supernatural appearances such as ghosts, spectres and gloomy landscapes expressed
peoples deepest fears and insecurities.
Gothic novels represent the antagonism between reason and fantasy, the search
for identity and therefore, the desire to escape from reality. Alongside the obsessive
compulsion for progress and the rapid changes of the era, there was an increasing
anxiety about the future what led into a universe of decadence in all aspects of the
novel: plot, settings, characters and characterisations, which not only evoke a horrid
and frightening atmosphere but also a deteriorated world. This gloomy and
mysterious atmosphere has repeatedly signalled the return the disturbing past upon
presents and presents emotions of terror and laughter and continues to shadow the
progress of modernity a type of narrative that displays the underside of enlightenment
and humanist values. Gothic condenses the many perceived threats to these values
associated with supernatural and natural forces, imaginative excess and delusions,
religious and human evil social transgression, mental disintegration and spiritual
corruption in which virtue cedes to vice, reason to desire and law to tyranny.
For the analysis of the already mentioned novels and in the light of the latter
statement, there are several authors who have contributed enormously to the investigation
of the sources and development of the Gothic novel. For the present work, it is essential to
review the investigation of the lecturer and literary theorist Fred Botting who has widely
written on the transformation of the Gothic novel through history and outlined the major
figures who define the genre. He has examined the texts, origins and writers as well as their
historical and cultural location, their critical reception and their influence. Besides, authors
like Michael Gamer and E.J. Clery and Kelly Hurley provide through accounts of this
haunting to horrifying genre from the 1790s to the end of the twentieth century exploring
the connections of Gothic fiction to political and industrial revolution and examine the
change of attitudes towards human identity life and death.
The analysis of the novels with a regarding background investigation and relying on
sustainable theoretical support will allow to:
Provide a pertinent approach of the literary works concerned with the purpose of
exploring accurately the features of Gothic novels that represent the perspective of
decadency in relation to its characters, settings and characterisations framed in a
historic period.
Trace the sources and developments of a transgressive genre which has influenced
literature for over two centuries in order to examine their critical reception and their
influence.
Analyse and compare three emblematic Gothic novels to discover its progression
and distinctions in the literary uses that are presented and how the authors personal
style is imprinted in each of them.

And finally, characterise the Gothic novel as an artistic expression in the European
Romanticism, specifically in England that expressed the antagonism with the
sociocultural changes of the time.