Dec 21, 2009

Gothic Literature | Critical Overview

Gothic literature has elicited spirited critical debate from its earliest days. According to Botting in his book, The Gothic:

Between 1790 and 1810, critics were almost univocal in their condemnation of what was seem as an unending torrent of popular trashy novels. Intensified by fears of radicalism and revolution, the challenge to aesthetic values was framed in terms of social transgression: virtue, property and domestic order were considered to be under threat. Such reactions from critics are not surprising. The aesthetic values of the eighteenth century included order,...