21 July 2004 at 1:37 PM, post #54

Forster, E.M.. "Story and Plot." Narrative Dynamics. Ed. Brian Richardson. Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2002. 71-72.

Forster's short essay deconstructs the words story and plot in an examination of their relative functions in narrative. A story is a "narrative of events arranged in their time sequence" while the plot revolves around the ensemble of these stories. He proceeds to construct curiousity as a relative of the story, one that avoids intelligence and memory in blind pursuit of an ending. "If we would grasp the plot we must add intellgence and memory" (71). The intelligent reader uses past encounters with similar devices to interpret, while memory allows us to see the story as thematically non-linear, linking earlier pieces with later ones across time (both physical time reading and novel time passing). The plot "ought not to mislead," it should be, Forster concludes, a cohesive whole which should excite in the able reader new combinations and permutations long after initial reading, new arrangements rendered more enjoyable by their obscurity.

14 July 2004 at 11:59 AM, post #50

Annotation #10:

Schmitt, Cannon. "Techniques of Terror, Technologies of Nationality: Ann Radcliffe's The Italian". ELH 61.4 (1994) pp. 853-876.

Cannon Schmitt's "Techniques of Terror, Technologies of Nationality: Ann Radcliffe's The Italian" examines the use of nationality, and subsequently otherness, by the gothic novelists not only as an intensification of the Britain-other binary, but as a way of "developign techniques of suspense and terror characteristic of the Gothic novel and its literary descendants: sensation, horror, and detective fiction" (863).

The frame, Schmitt begins, immediately renders The Italian a story of otherness, "[The Italian] should be taken as emblematic of Italianness, Catholicism, a mysterious and un-English way of life" (853). Schmitt moves on to questions of familiarity, remarking that Paulo's attachment to Naples' landscape is typical of servant characters. However, Schmitt contends that complex foreignness is no better than simple homeliness. "Foreignness in The Italian is concentrated in the figure of Schedoni" (860). Ellena then becomes English, or at least non-other.

Schmitt continues by describing the "technologies of terror" that these questions of nationality uncover. The gothic novel, in general, takes a character that the reader has identified as non-other and places them in foreign, frightening situations (dungeons, the Inquisition, medieval Italy to name a few) which subsequently become frightful. Schmitt proceeds by invoking Foucault, as well as a Foucauldian reading by Nancy Armstrong, to analyze questions of otherness from a 20th-century perspective. He concludes by arguing that "the Gothic novel nevertheless fails to become synonymous with English nationalism in the way that, for instance, the Gothic revival in architecture does" (872). The function of the Gothic is inherently British, to some degree, and the technologies of terror were founded on an English perspective.

14 July 2004 at 10:45 AM, post #49

Annotation #9:

Andriopoulous, Stefan. "The Invisible Hand: Supernatural Agency in Political Economy and the Gothic Novel". ELH, 66.3 (1999) pp. 739-758.

Stefan Andriopoulous' "The Invisible Hand: Supernatural Agency in Political Economy and the Gothic Novel" examines the passage from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) where he describes the "the invisible hand" and follows this metaphor to fruition in the gothic novel. Andripoulous argues that there is a relationship between the portrayal of the invisible hand in Smith and the reappearance of a literal invisible hand in many Gothic novels (The Castle of Otranto by Horatio Walpole and The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, for example). Focusing on examples from Otranto but extrapolating to Gothic conventions, Andriopoulous argues that "Thus--according to the gothic novel--only those 'who affect to trade for the public good' are rewarded for their virtuous self-denial" (748).

Andriopoulous links the function of Smith's economic "invisible hand" with the narrative function of the same entity. "...the social science of political economy seeks to follow the model of the natural sciences in discovering hidden, regular laws behind nature's sensible appearances" (741). The invisible hand is something which, both to Smith and to the gothics, makes things work. Gothic authors, Andriopoulous argues, rely on the same sort of mysterious force to guide their narrative world. Andriopoulous targets words such as "imperceptibly" (742) or "unintentionally" (752) to identify inner workings which pervade gothicism.

Andriopoulous concludes by recognizing that while "the invisible hand" only appeared once in The Wealth of Nations, "[Adam Smith] is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention: the writing of a gothic novel" (753).

02 July 2004 at 11:18 AM, post #26

Final Justin Annotation #8

Jones, Wendy. "Stories of Desire in The Monk". ELH, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Spring 1990), pp. 129-150.

Jones conducts an examintation of the role of narrative in Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk. She points out 23 instances of stories recounted by characters within the story, and notes that each concerns sexual desire in some capacity. Jones argues that throughout the novel there is a close link between sexual desire and the narrative act: "Through self-reflexive moments, the text draws attention to this linking of desire with narrative: it is often allegorized within the stories themselves" (130). Jones goes on to claim that while certainly The Monk has value as a "social document" (129), "I hope to show that its narrative qualities are inextricable from its political content" (129).

Jones goes on to discuss the function of narrative as both a means of fulfilling sexual desire (Raymond, for example, telling his long story to Lorenzo in order to get his consent) and as an issue of power (in the case of Agnes, "the suppression of her sexuality is always accompanied by the loss of her ability to tell her story (and vice versa)" (132). Her construction of Theodore as an author figure, and examination of several of his poems allows Jones to frame "good" and "bad" desire by conflicting sexual tensions seen in both the internal narratives and the story as a whole.

Tones goes on to discuss the roles of marriage as a function of "good" and "bad" desires and notes Lewis' willingness to accept societal transgressions if the desire and intentions are good. For example, Agnes' and Raymond's conduct would have been "unforgiveable breaches in most other contemporary novels" (141) because their desire is "good". "The Monk asserts the value of individual desire through its condemnation of characters and forces that deny the individual's right to the pursuit of happiness" (144).

02 July 2004 at 11:14 AM, post #25

Final Justin Annotation #7

Haggerty, George E. "Fact and Fancy in the Gothic Novel". Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 39, No. 4, (Mar., 1985), pp. 379-391.

Haggerty constructs a chronological examination of the representations of terror and the supernatural in the Gothic novel while evaluating the respective successes of Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk and Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer. Haggerty questioned the role of verisimilitude in the construction of the supernatural and reviewed each Gothic authors' slant on the portrayal of horror and the way in which objective fact collides with subjective experience in each novel. He constructs the problem to which each Gothic novelist replies, "Gothic intentions are repeatedly undermined by an insistance on a kind of development of character or setting or plot that leaves the subjective world answerable to the demands of external reality" (382).

Haggerty first deconstructs description in The Mysteries of Udolpho and pronounces it to momentarily blur the distinction between fact and fancy, "which for Radcliffe seems to be enough" (384). This isn't sufficient for Lewis however, who "introduces the supernatural, for instance, baldly and without apology into his fictive world" (384). Haggerty applauds the maintenance of the "external 'reality' of the novel" (385) through the use of perspective. "We can only believe Raymond to the degree that we can believe in him, and we can only believe in him to the degree that his vision in convincing" (385). Lewis positions himself closer to Radcliffe, than to Haggerty in terms of overcoming the basic problem of the Gothic novel, Haggerty argues. Maturin, then, "seems to have had a clearer sense than either Radcliffe or Lewis of the formal issues involved in Gothic expression" (386) because "by shifting from fiction to horrifying fact, [Maturin] taps a whole range of responses otherwise unavailable" (389). Maturin masters, to Haggerty, the use of perspective to create horror through a confusion of perspective (especially in the case of Moncada) in a way that fleshes out the spectrum of emotions available to the Gothic author, "The key to Maturin's presentation of subjectivity lies crucially in his ability to confuse our sense of what is 'real'" (390).

22 June 2004 at 3:49 PM, post #16

Final Justin Annotation #6

Hume, Robert D. "Gothic versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel." PMLA, Vol. 84 (March, 1969).

In an article positioning the Gothic novel against the Romantic, Hume states that "I wish to do three things: to analyze the characteristics and development of the Gothic novel; to define the essence of that "Gothic" which can be significant for [Horace] Walpole, [Herman] Melville, and [William] Faulkner alike; and to set the original Gothic novels in better historical perspective by defining their relation to the romantic literature of the same period" (282).

The Gothic genre "crudely forged by Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe and M.G. Lewis" (205) is positioned by Hume more in terms of their psychological influence on the reader than the ancient devices ("ruined abbeys and the like" (205)) typically associated with the genre. He defines this "psychological interest" (283) by how characters respond to stimuli. He mobilizes Walpole's claim that "all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in their situation" (283) as an example of this characterization.

Hume goes on to compare later romantic writings with their Gothic counterparts, arguing "Gothic and romantic writing usually lead the reader to consider internal mental processes and reactions. The one sort of writing is basically social in its concern, the other essentially individual" (288). Another interesting literary device (which Hume borrows from Coleridgean literary thought) is the "fancy". "Fancy will never appear to resolve the deepest conflicts and contradictions of this world; this is precisely what the romantics try to do, and what the Gothic novel never does" (289), which is why "the writers of Gothic never offer intuitive solutions" (289). The romantic writers, on the other hand, reconcile the discordance "resolving their apparent contradictions imaginatively in the creation of a higher order" (290). This, Hume argues, is the primary difference between the two movements.

Updated 2 July 2004, 11:06 AM

22 June 2004 at 3:16 PM, post #15

Final Justin Annotation #5

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "The Character in the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic Novel". PMLA, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Mar., 1981), 255-270.

Sedgwick's essay focuses on three Gothic texts, Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian as well as Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk in order to "show that an analysis of the thematic attention to surfaces changes the traditional view of the Gothic contribution to characterization and figuration in fiction" (255). She partitions her argument into three parts.

The first part of Sedgwick's article describes the sexual function of the veil in each of the chosen novels, and "points out that the attributes of the veil, and of the surface generally, are contagious metonymically, by touch, and that a related thematic strain depicts veils, like flesh, as suffused or marked with blood" (256). The veil also serves as "the locus of substitution of one person for another" (258) as seen in The Monk when the bleeding nun is substituted for Agnes.

Sedgwick's second section concerns questions of marking, of both flesh and veils, as "referential: both kinds, that is, have important though incomplete similarities to written language, and the use of the term "character"" (256). Sedgwick details instances of symbols (a primary example being the blood-soaked sheets in the bandit's house in The Monk) and their function as a "discontinuity: not, in this incident, between an already constituted code of signifiers and signifieds but between a distinct and comparable past (what happened to the last guest) and present/future (What will happen to this one)" (259). The argument moves from the construction of symbols to the construction of character: "In the Gothic view, therefore, individual identity, including sexual identity, is social and relational rather than original or private" (256).

The third section of the article discusses the "repetitiveness and fixity inherent in the Gothic presentation of character" (256) especially as the constructions of character can "represent a powerfully consistent working out of a dialectic inherent in fictional writing" (256). In this way, Sedgwick argues, the deconstruction of the Gothic character can be applied to future novels, and the Gothic influence can shed light on "later, more accessible, and apparently realistic fictions" (256).

Updated 2 July 2004, 10:59 AM

22 June 2004 at 2:25 PM, post #13

Final Justin Annotation #4

Gamer, Michael. "Genres for the Prosecution: Pornography and the Gothic." PMLA, Oct. 1999, 1043-1053.

Gamer's examination of the terms "pornography" and "Gothic" focuses on the turn of the 18th century, and specifically on critical reception to Matthew G. Lewis' The Monk. He frames his argument through questions of genre, arguing that while 20th-century critic Fredric Jameson defines genre as a "'social contract' between any 'writer and a specific reading public'" (1043), the critical reception to The Monk and the increase in the prosecution of libel crimes imported outside influences on readers of the text. Gamer claimed that governmental and social influences affected readerly and scholarly reception of The Monk by linking it with pornographic material.

Gamer begins with questions of pornographic texts, and invokes the arguments of Walter Kendrick, among others, regarding pornography as a "historically shaped" genre. Few pornographic novels were published between 1745 and 1820, which allowed legal boundaries regarding supposedly obscene texts to widen. A legal precedent was set in 1727 for the prosecution of the authors of obscene texts.

Gamer then concentrates on the reception to The Monk and Walter Scott's disclosure of Lewis' suppression of certain controversial aspects of his novel in order to avoid prosecution. Gamer's argument then veers towards the effect of threatened prosecution on the Gothic genre. The strikingly negative response, including a critical redistinction of The Monk as "pornography" and not romance altered reception, forced Lewis to apologize and deradicalize future works and, as Gamer argues, "the legal category of obscene libel was brought to bear on gothic texts to the extent that they could be associated with The Monk's perceived textual practices and readerly effects. This prevailing association, I contend, not only shaped the later output of Lewis and writers associated with him; it also affected the gothic's cultural status and trajectory for most of the nineteenth century by stigmatizing the genre legally and morally" (1051).

He concludes by returning to his questions of genre and claiming that the imposition of a pornographic mindset onto readers of The Monk blurred questions of genre as a contract between reader and writer, as proposed by Jameson, and introduced the complication of a broader social reaction.

Updated 2 July 2004, 10:54 AM

22 June 2004 at 1:46 PM, post #12

I'm also going to do:

Genres for the Prosecution: Pornography and the Gothic, by Michael Gamer (PMLA, 1999)

The Character in the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic Novel, by Eve Sedgwick (PMLA, 1981)

22 June 2004 at 1:06 PM, post #10

Final Justin Wallace Annotation #3

The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold E. Hogle.

This comprehensive look at Gothic fiction figures prominently in the critical examination of the genre. In 14 chapters beginning with an introduction to the field and concluding with a chapter on the 'Aftergothic', Hogle invites scholars from England, Scotland, New Zealand, the United States and Canada to provide insight into different periods, locations and mediums of the Gothic tradition.

Beginning with his own examination of "the Gothic in western culture", Hogle includes essays on the genesis and rise of the Gothic novel in Britain, France and Germany. The collection then advances into the effects of the Gothic on Romantic writing as well as the development of a Scottish, Irish, American and theatrical Gothic tradition. Proceedingly chronologically into the Victorian Gothic (1830-1880) and subsequent "British Gothic fiction, 1885-1930", the collection concludes with a discussion of cinematic representations, colonial Gothic influences in the Caribbean and ends with two chapters on the influences of the Gothic movement on contemporary ideology. Instead of focusing solely on major figures, each chapter strives to provide a historical context for the works in their scope. "The result, all the contributors hope, is both a history of the Gothic that is helpful in the reading or viewing of many such fictions and a revelation of the cultural functions that the Gothic was created to serve, and then the different ones it has proceeded to serve, across the three centuries that constitute the modern western world" (xv).

Updated 22 June 2004, 1:08 PM

Updated 2 July 2004, 10:40 AM

22 June 2004 at 11:43 AM, post #9

Final Justin Wallace Annotation #2

Savoy, Eric. "The rise of American Gothic" included in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction ed. Jerrold E. Hogle.

In his examination of the rise of the American Gothic tradition, Savoy focuses on close readings of Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland; of the Transformation, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Custom-House" and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat" to demonstrate that "The Gothic tradition in the United States reflects not the critic Harold Bloom's model of literary advancement as overcoming the 'anxiety of influence' - for these writiers were keenly celebratory of their dark antecedents - but rather a haunting influence of anxiety, the enduring appeal of the Gothic to our most continuous fears, especially in an America haunted by the dark recesses of its own history" (187, emphasis original).

Savoy argues that while the influences of British Gothic novelists on the American tradition is clear, "the figures it generated are ... insistently troubling" (168). He mobilizes D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature to explain the bizarre images invoked in the American Gothic novels. Lawrence explains that the nineteenth-century writers fought against the current of European realism and were even more extreme than the future modernists. In 19th-century literature, "The figure of the wolf could mean this, or it could mean that - or both or more ... All we are left with, ultimately, is the image of the monster's 'red eyes in the dark'" (171). The power of the American Gothic novel, Savoy argues, is in its "dependence upon figures that cannot be said to 'work' in any conventional way" (171). His subsequent close readings of the works named above demonstrate this uncomfortable instability that characterizes the rise of the American Gothic novel.

The American Gothic writers, Savoy argues, were not ignored by future American authors. Their influences can be most clearly observed in Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.

Updated 22 June 2004, 12:49 PM

Updated 2 July 2004, 10:37 AM

22 June 2004 at 10:49 AM, post #6

Final Justin Wallace Annotation #1

Miles, Robert. "The 1790s: the effulgence of Gothic" included in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold E. Hogle.

Robert Miles provides an examination of the Gothic novel during the 1790s. He describes the period between 1788 and 1807 when the Gothic novel was at the height of its popularity, holding 30% of the market share during that time period. There certainly was an effulgence, as the title proposes, of the Gothic novel in the 1790s.

The brunt of his essay focus on the reasons behind this increase in popularity. He questions previous scholarly publications that link the horror novel with the French Revolution and subsequent Reign of Terror. Miles claims that since the genre experienced a sharp increase of popularity in 1788, a full year before the revolution, it was instead due to a reader base which was itself more revolutionary, and therefore more willing to accept revolutionary writing. He credits Ann Radcliffe as the dominant Gothic force of the decade, and argues that "to a very real extent 1790s Gothic writing happened in her shadow" (45).

Miles proceeds to divide the Gothic novel into two categories. The pre-1794 novel generally reacting to "Burke's critique of the revolution and his idealization of chivalry as a culturally transcendent force" (54) while in the post-1794 period "a new sense of modernity emerged as the inrushing of an unrecoverable chaos" (54). The Gothic novel of the 1790s, Miles concludes, "follows the first law of genre: to deviate and make it new. During the 1790s the Gothic does not just simply burst forth. It multiplies, branches out, and proliferates" (58).

Updated 22 June 2004, 11:03 AM

Updated 22 June 2004, 11:04 AM

Updated 2 July 2004, 10:33 AM

22 June 2004 at 9:18 AM, post #5

I'm not really sure about strict time periods on these things, but here are my first few annotations (all from The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Literature):

The genesis of "Gothic" fiction, E.J. Clery.

The 1790's: the effulgence of Gothic, Robert Miles.

Gothic fictions and Romantic writing in Britain, Michael Gamer.

The rise of American Gothic (perhaps, I need to check time period), Eric Savoy.

The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold E. Hogle.

I'm gonna find some more stuff in IC tomorrow.

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