Gothic and Horror

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Gothic and Horror

• History of gothicism
• architecture
• literature
• Characteristics of gothicism
• Horror as a genre
• Werewolves as a metaphor for the dark half.

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Gothic architecture

• 12th to 16th Century
• Mainly churches, cathedrals
• Narrow buttresses, external arches, thinner walls
  and glass windows, higher roof.

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Gothic architecture

• Narrow buttresses

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Gothic architecture

• Notre Dame de Paris
• flying buttresses
• rose window
• spires

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Gothic architecture

• Chartres
• flying buttresses
• rose window
• spires

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Gothic architecture

• Amiens
• flying buttresses
• spires

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Gothic architecture

• Notre Dame de Paris
• Rose window
• Virgin and child prophets
• 32 Old Testament kings 32 high priests.

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Gothic architecture

• Gargoyles
• watersprouts

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19th Century Gothic Revival

• Renewal of medieval aesthetic motifs.
• Emergence of gothic literature late 18th Century
• Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, 1831

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Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

• He looked at the impassive sculptured figures
  round the tower, suspended, like himself, over
  the abyss, but without terror for themselves or
  pity for him. All about him was stonethe
  grinning monsters before his eyes.

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Gothicism in literature the beginning

• Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto, 1764

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Gothicism in literature the beginning

• Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto, 1764

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Gothicism in lit the beginning

• Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto, 1764

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Gothic novels

• Clara Reeve, The Old English Baron (The Champion
  of Virtue), 1777.
• William Beckford, Vathek, 1786
• Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794
  The Italian, 1797

• Matthew Lewis, The Monk, 1796
• Percy Shelley, Zastrozzi, 1810 St. Irvyne, 1811
• Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1818 (1798)
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

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Ann Radcliffe, The mysteries of Udolpho

• Gloom
• Dark
• Romance
• Personnification of space
• Presence of sublime
• Sexual metaphors
• The double (the other half)

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The sublime

• Striking grandeur of thought and emotion
• The power to provoke  ecstasy 
• Produces sensations of awe, and even of pain

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The sublime

• Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790)
• John Baillie, Essay on the Sublime (1747)
• Edmund Burke, Philosophical Inquiry into the
  Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
  (1756)
•  Whatever is in any sort terrible ... is a
  source of the sublime that is, it is productive
  of the strongest emotion which the mind is
  capable of feeling .

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Ann Radcliffe, The mysteries of Udolpho

• Emily gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle,
  which she understood to be Montoni's for, though
  it was now lighted up by the setting sun, the
  gothic greatness of its features, and its
  mouldering walls of dark grey stone, rendered it
  a gloomy and sublime object. As she gazed, the
  light died away on its walls, leaving a
  melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and
  deeper, as the thin vapour crept up the mountain,
  while the battlements above were still tipped
  with splendour. From those too, the rays soon
  faded, and the whole edifice was invested with
  the solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely
  and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of
  the scene, and to frown defiance on all who dared
  to invade its solitary reign.

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Ann Radcliffe, The mysteries of Udolpho

• Another gate delivered them into the second
  court, grass-grown, and more wild than the first,
  where, as she surveyed through the twilight its
  desolation its lofty walls, overtopped with
  moss and nightshade, and the embattled towers
  that rose above, long-suffering and murder came
  to her thoughts. One of those instantaneous and
  unaccountable convictions, which sometimes
  conquer even strong minds, impressed her with its
  horror. The sentiment was not diminished when she
  entered an extensive gothic hall, obscured by the
  gloom of evening, which a light, glimmering at a
  distance through a long perspective of arches,
  only rendered more striking. As a servant brought
  the lamp nearer, partial gleams fell upon the
  pillars and the pointed arches, forming a strong
  contrast with their shadows, that stretched along
  the pavement and the walls.

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Top 9 signs you are a character of a gothic novel

• You are visiting a dark castle
• You are visiting the ruins of a dark castle
• Your host never eats anything during mealtime
• Your host often licks his lips while looking at
  you
• Your host has a secret laboratory

• Most of your sentences contain the words
   gothic ,  dark  and  dreadful 
• Strange creatures roam at night
• Your host is anormally nice to you
• You often say  thee  or  thou  instead of
   you 

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After the Gothic Age

• Edgar Allan Poe (1830s-1840s)
• P.H. Lovecraft (1910s-1920s)
• Stephen King (1970s-)
• Ann Rice (1980s-)
• Annette Curtis Klause (1980s-)
• ...

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From gothic to horror

• Mid nineteenth century / beginning twentieth
  century
• Poe ( Fall of the House of Usher ,  The Pit
  and the Pendulum , etc.)
• Thomas Prest (The Calendar of Horrors)
• George Reynolds (Wagner the Werewolf)
• Bram Stoker (Dracula)
• First horror movie (1908) Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
  Hyde (William Selig, dir.)

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Horror in flims

• 1930s onward
• Tod Browning's Dracula (1931)
• James Whale's Frankenstein (1932)
• Karl Freund's The Mummy (1933)
• Tod Brownings Mark of the Vampire (1935)
• George Waggners The Wolf Man (1941)
• Jacques Tourneurs I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
• Mark Robsons Isle of the Dead (1945)

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Dracula
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Dracula
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Dracula
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Frankenstein
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Frankenstein
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Frankenstein
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The Mummy
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Wolf Man
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Wolf Man
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I Walked with a Zombie
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Werewolf of London (1935)
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Horror novels and movies

• Still extremely popular today
• Especially with teenagers
• Why do we (they) enjoy them so much?

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Am I in a contemporary horror movie ?

• The first two awkward noises are always caused by
  a cat.
• The murderer is always three feet away from the
  cat.
• If you walk backwards, you will either fall into
  the murderers arms or into the body of your best
  friend
• Sexually active teenagers will always be killed
  before the others
• You can never outrun the murderer

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Am I in a contemporary horror movie ?

• If you run, you will fall every three seconds for
  no apparent reason
• Cars in perfect condition will start only if the
  murderer is close enough to kill you
• Nobody ever survives a short trip in the basement
• Murderers always know how to cut the phone line
  as well as the electricity from a house
• Instead of staying grouped, you and your friends
  will go separate ways to stop the madman.