Introduction: modernity and the proliferation of the Gothic

Hogle, Jerrold E.

doi:10.1017/cco9781139151757.003

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Just as pointedly, 'Rats' contains four of the five gothic elementseverything except female heroinesnoted by Jerrold E. Hogle in his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic: antiquated settings (Exham Priory), ghostly or monstrous figure (the rats), conflicting systems of belief that pull characters toward outmoded superstitions (Delapore and his family history), and over-the-top word patterns or images. 10 Even more importantly, the Gothicdespite its intimations of anti-modernityis 'deeply bound up with the contradictions basic to modern existence'. 11 As I will show, Lovecraft uses 'Rats' to give shape and meaning to those contradictions in the immediate post-WWI era, and his narrator's 'transatlantic heritage' (91) offers a miniature parallel to a non-cosmic yet international macrocosm: the process of evolution and de-evolution seen by Lovecraft as dooming every civilization.…”

Section: Atavism and The International Weirdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Just like Henry James (Except with Cannibalism): The International Weird in H. P. Lovecraft's ‘The Rats in the Walls’

Wise

2021

Gothic Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The early short story ‘The Rats in the Walls’ (1924) is recognized as the best of H. P. Lovecraft's fiction prior to ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, but this story is also non-cosmic and therefore (for some) not truly ‘Lovecraftian’. In conjunction with dense prose and seemingly throwaway references, this view has made ‘Rats’ arguably the most inadequately read of Lovecraft's major works. This article proposes that we read ‘Rats’, Lovecraft's first tale within an unofficial ‘witch cult’ trilogy, as a story of the path not taken in modern weird fiction. Using Henry James's ‘The Jolly Corner’ (1908) as a companion piece, I argue that the international weird forms a major component of Lovecraft's text. Far from portraying horrors merely personal in scope, Lovecraft uses the Delapore family and their geographical dislocations between two distinct nation-states, America and England, to signal what he sees as the historical rise and fall – or evolution and de-evolution – of culture itself.

show abstract

Section: Atavism and The International Weirdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Just like Henry James (Except with Cannibalism): The International Weird in H. P. Lovecraft's ‘The Rats in the Walls’

Wise

2021

Gothic Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Jerrold Hogle (2014), un importante estudioso de la literatura romántica inglesa, se refiere a las fuerzas antagónicas que recorren un libro como El castillo de Otranto, publicado en 1764 por Horace Walpole y considerado como el texto inaugural del terror gótico. Para Hogle el calificativo de moderno utilizado por Walpole debe ser interpretado como un reflejo de las aspiraciones de la clase media que comienza a emerger en dicha época, una clase profundamente preocupada por los anhelos ideológicos de la creciente burguesía y que intentaba romper con los previos absolutismos religiosos y políticos.…”

Section: Los Estratos Históricos De Lo Ominosounclassified

“…Por otra parte, la dimensión clásica de la novela de terror gótico, según Hogle, es realmente un pastiche de diversas referencias (elementos shakesperianos, operáticos, medievales, que aparecen unidos a fragmentos de motivos espirituales griegos y católicos), que teniendo poco de antiguo busca condensar una serie de ansiedades culturales que encuentran su expresión en el compendio híbrido del gótico moderno. De este modo, la imaginación gótica parece dar cuenta del acoso de fuerzas contramodernas, fuerzas amenazantes que socavan el ideal de una subjetividad que se supone capaz de dejar atrás las tendencias regresivas que impiden el progreso del ideal iluminista (Hogle, 2014). El pastiche estético de la literatura gótica compuso una serie de imágenes que por un efecto de fetichización parecían referir a un pasado idealizado que tiene mucho más de mito que de realidad, tal como lo indica Botting (2012): "los paisajes salvajes, los castillos y abadías en ruinas, los laberintos oscuros y húmedos, los eventos maravillosos y sobrenaturales, los tiempos y las costumbres lejanas" no solo resultan imágenes de un supuesto pasado ya abandonado, "sino que también introducen las pasiones, los deseos y las emociones que [la Ilustración] reprime" (p. 19).…”

Section: Los Estratos Históricos De Lo Ominosounclassified

Lo ominoso: estética y subjetivación histórica en la literatura gótica y el psicoanálisis

Sánchez

2020

Atenea (Concepc.)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Resumen: Tomando como eje argumental el concepto de lo ominoso, se explora la construcción teórica de este término durante la Ilustración, y su incidencia tanto en la literatura gótica moderna como en la obra freudiana de comienzos del siglo XX. La hipótesis desarrollada es que este concepto tiene una especificidad histórica y que su inclusión como engranaje estructural, tanto en la ficción gótica como en el discurso psicoanalítico, da cuenta de fenómenos de representación cuyo análisis permite una aproximación crítica a los marcos epistémicos y a los efectos de subjetivación movilizados por el espíritu iluminista.

show abstract

“…The latter half of the twentieth century up until the present day sees the Gothic continue to mutate and permeate through, describe, and react to contemporary culture (Spooner, 2006(Spooner, & 2012Botting, 2014;Hogle, 2014). What constitutes a Gothic narrative in the era of a postmodern and 'phantomodernist' society is somewhat tricky.…”

Section: -The Uncannymentioning

confidence: 99%

Digesting creepypasta: social media horror narratives as gothic fourth-generation digital fiction

Ondrak¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This thesis examines, recontextualises, and provides a new methodology for analysing a collection of Internet phenomena known as ‘Creepypasta’. Critically engaging with its form and participation in the Gothic and horror literary traditions, I argue that creepypasta should be considered as an emergent genre that manifests through the form of digital fiction and derives a renewed horror and Gothic affect through that form. Existing as unnerving tales written for and spread across social media and Web2.0 websites, creepypasta is an acknowledged, but under-studied genre of fiction. The majority of scholarly attention has analysed creepypasta through the lens of folklore studies which, while aware of the affordances of its digital form, considers creepypasta as folklore first rather than being attentive to media specificity or situating its form and unnerving affective qualities at the centre of its definition. I attest that creepypasta is emblematic of fourth-generation digital fiction and a continuation of horror and Gothic literary traits. In particular, I forward that creepypasta leverages its form to reinvent and renew ways of engaging with the Gothic traits of threats and ontological ambiguity. This, I argue, is primarily achieved through what I define as “ontological flattening”, whereby real users and their responses, and the fictional story they are reading and responding to exist in the same textual space without borders, implied hierarchy, or explicit indicators of fictionality in the story text. Throughout my analyses of Candle Cove (2009), The Slender Man (2009), and The Interface Series (2016), I demonstrate how ontological flattening is central to how creepypasta renews Gothic characteristics. In chapter 4, I forward a development on Isabelle Klaiber’s “double plot model” of collaborative interactive fiction to take into account collaboration in ontologically flattened spaces. In chapter 5, I also introduce the concept of the techno-Weird as a new form of contemporary Gothic fiction that uses ontologically flattened spaces as a way to emphasise characteristics of weird fiction. I conclude by presenting my model of the relationship between readers, creepypasta, and ontologically flattened spaces, and indicating where future applications may lie.

show abstract

Introduction: modernity and the proliferation of the Gothic

Cited by 10 publications

References 7 publications

Just like Henry James (Except with Cannibalism): The International Weird in H. P. Lovecraft's ‘The Rats in the Walls’

Just like Henry James (Except with Cannibalism): The International Weird in H. P. Lovecraft's ‘The Rats in the Walls’

Lo ominoso: estética y subjetivación histórica en la literatura gótica y el psicoanálisis

Digesting creepypasta: social media horror narratives as gothic fourth-generation digital fiction

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About