Category: Coffeehouse #3 (Page 1 of 2)

1. The Gothic deals in transgressions and negativity, perhaps in reaction against the optimistic rationalism of its founding era, which allowed for a rethinking of the prohibitions and sanctions that had previously seemed divinely ordained but now appeared to be simple social agreements in the interest of progress and civic stability. (p. 5)
2. Behind the states of fear and horror, and driving through the tissue of reasonable and rational explanations, loom the outlines of real horrors. In early Gothic this was sometimes the reality of the oppression of women, or children, in the patriarchy that denied them rights. (p. 8)
3. Gothic deals in transgressions and negativity, perhaps in reaction against the optimistic rationalism of its founding era. (Page 5)
4. Gothic deals with extreme states of past traumas and guilt. (page 6)
5. The true period of gothic’s cultural aesthetics religious and political background was from 1764 to 1824 ( page 4)

5 Main ideas

Page 1. The beginning of Gothic Fiction from the realistic traditional fiction.

Page 3. Shows the extremes that gothic fiction pushes towards.

Page 4. The background information that is presented to show the relation in real life

Page 5: exploring extreme whether of cruelty, rapacity and fear, or passion and sexual degradation

Page 7. Setting creates a mysterious atmosphere

1. “Such texts are not so much working to adapt the Gothic mode; instead the Gothic emerges from the conditions they seek to describe”. (pg 4)
2. A defining feature of Gothic includes a pushing towards extremes and excess. (pg 5)
3. Some extremes and taboos that Gothic explores are religious profanities, demonism, necromancy, and incest. (pg 6)
4. “Gothic interest in extreme states and actions can also be seen to correlate with widespread social anxieties and fears.” (pg 6)
5. “One of the great strengths of the Gothic is its ability to articulate the voice of the “other” within its fancy-dress disguise of stylized contestations” (pg 8) 

The five main points that mostly interested me were
1. Gothic representation of extreme circumstances of terror, oppression and persecution, darkness and obscurity of setting, and innocence betrayed (Page 1).
2. Among the extremes and taboos that the gothic explores are religious profanities, demonism, occultism, necromancy and incest (Page 6).
3. Gothic also deals with the extreme states of past traumas and guilt (Page 6)
4. Landscapes in the gothic similarity dwelt on the exposed, inhumane, and pitiless nature of mountains, crags, and wastelands. Even something simple as a house, cellar or rooms can become a gothic setting (Page 7).
5. What led to American gothic was the frontier experience of inherent solitude, potential violence, fear of European subversion, and anxieties about democracy as well as the absence of society racial issues concerning both slavery and native Americans. (Page 4)

1. Some strict interpreters of the Gothic genre would agree with Maurice that the true period of Gothic and its religion, cultural, aesthetic and political background began from 1764 to 1824, the period of the first Gothic revival and the culture of Georgian England. (Pg. 4)

2. Some of the extremes and taboos that Gothic explores are religious profanities, demonisim, occultism, necromancy and incest. (Pg.5)

3. Gothic interest in extreme states and actions can also be seen to correlate with widespread social anxieties and fears. (Pg.6.)

4. Among the most striking features of Gothic genre is the style of its architectural settings. (Pg.7.)

5. In Gothic the terror of what might happen or what might be happening is largely foregrounded over the visceral horror. (Pg.8)

Some points that stood out to me in Allen Lloyd-Smith’s “American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction”

1. “From the earliest period of American Gothicism – and some critics have seen almost the whole of American writing as a Gothic literature – differences in American circumstances led American Gothicists in other directions…” (pg. 4)
2. “Among these American pressures were the frontier experience, with its inherent solitude and potential violence; the Puritan inheritance; fear of European subversion and anxieties about popular democracy which was then a new experiment; the relative absence of developed ‘society;’ and very significantly, racial issues concerning both slavery and the Native Americans.” (pg. 4)
3. “Hallmarks of the Gothic include a pushing toward extremes and excess, and that, of course, implies an investigation of limits. In exploring extremes…Gothic tends to reinforce, if only in a novel’s final pages, culturally prescribed doctrines of morality and propriety.” (pg. 5)
4. “Among the extremes and taboos that Gothic explores…This can be interpreted as a dark side of Enlightenment freethinking or the persistence of an increasingly excluded occultist tradition in western culture, one which paradoxically insisted on an acknowledgment of the continuing existence of magic, religious, and demonic forces within a more and more secular society.” (pg. 6)
5. “Gothic interest in extreme states and actions can also be seen to correlate with widespread social anxieties and fears.” (pg. 6)

1. Gothics representation of extreme circumstances of terror, oppression and persecution, darkness and obscurity of setting, and innocence betrayed… – pg1
2. Rather than a simple matter of imitation and adaption, substituting the wilderness and the city for the subterranean rooms and corridors of the monastery, or the remote house for the castle, dark and dangerous woods for the bandit infested mountains of italy, certain unique cultural pressures led amercans to the gothic as an expression of their cery different conditions – pg2
3. Strict interpreters of the Gothic as a genre would perhaps agree with Maurice Levy’s insistence that the true periodof Gothiv, and its cultrual, aesthetic, religious, and political background, was from about 1764 to 1824, the period of the first Gothic Revival and the culture of Georgian England. Levy acknowledges however that the term has now become of much broader application and popular understanding…- pg2
4. Hallmarks of the Gothic include a pushing toward extremes and excess, and that, of course, implies an investigation of limits. In exploring extremes, whether of cruelty, rapacity and fear of passion and sexual degredation, the Gothic tends to reinforce, if only in a novels final pages, culturally prescribed doctrines of morality and propriety. -pg3
5. Gothic interest in extreme states and actions can also be seen to correlate with widespread social anxieties and feares. Significant amoung these are fears having to do with the suppressions of past traumas and guilt, anxieties concering class and gender, fear of revolutin, worries about the developing powers of science; an increaseing suspicion that empire and colonial experience might bring home an unwanted legacy; post-Darwinian suggestions of possible regression or atavism; and displaces version of the dread occasioned by syphallis, or much later, by AIDS

It is assumed that gothic fiction began as a lurid offshoot from a dominant tradition of largely realist and morally respectable fiction. (Page 3)

Strict interpreters of the Gothic as a genre would perhaps agree with Maurice Lévy’s insistence that the true period of Gothic, and its cultural, aesthetic, religious, and political background, was from about 1764 to 1824, the period of the first Gothic Revival, and the culture of Georgian England.° Lévy acknowledges however that the term has now become of much broader application and popular understanding, and has been used to describe texts ranging from Wuthering Heights (1847) to William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Page 4)

The Gothic deals in transgressions and negativity, perhaps in reaction against the optimistic rationalism of its founding era, which allowed for a rethinking of the prohibitions and sanctions that had previously seemed divinely ordained but now appeared to be simply social agreements in the interest of progress and civic stability. (Page 5)

Freethinking characters appear frequently in the Gothic, and they are generally up to no good, disbelieving in the significance of virginity, for example (while obsessively eager to deflower those who maintain it), and proclaiming their own superiority and inherent freedom as rational beings above the shibboleths of convention and religious faith. Their prey are innocents who put their trust in the benevolence and right thinking of others, and it is not difficult to see in these contrasts that the Gothic is in essence a reactionary form, like the detective novel, one that explores chaos and wrongdoing in a movement toward the ultimate restitution of order and convention. (Page 5)

Among the extremes and taboos that the Gothic explores are religious profanities, demonism, occultism, necromancy, and incest. This can be interpreted as a dark side of Enlightenment freethinking or the persistence of an increasingly excluded occultist tradition in western culture, one which paradoxically insisted on an acknowledgment of the continuing existence of magic, religious, and demonic forces within a more and more secular society. (Page 6)

1. Hallmarks of the Gothic include a pushing toward extremes and excess, and that, of course, implies an investigation of limits. (p. 5)
2. The Gothic deals in transgressions and negativity, perhaps in reaction against the optimistic rationalism of its founding era, which allowed for a rethinking of the prohibitions and sanctions that had previously seemed divinely ordained but now appeared to be simple social agreements in the interest of progress and civic stability. (p. 5)
3. Among the extremes and taboos that the Gothic explores are religious profanities, demonism, occultism, necromancy, and incest. (p. 6)
4. Landscapes in the Gothic similarity dwelt on the exposed, inhumane and pitiless nature of mountains, crags, and wastelands. In time these tropes of atmosphere, architecture, and landscapes became as metaphorical as actual, so that a simple house, a room or cellar, could become a Gothic setting, and a mere use of darkness or barrenness could call up the Gothic mood. (p. 7)
5. Behind the states of fear and horror, and driving through the tissue of reasonable and rational explanations, loom the outlines of real horrors. In early Gothic this was sometimes the reality of the oppression of women, or children, in the patriarchy that denied them rights. (p. 8)

1. Gothic elements can also be seen even in earlier works that began the English novel tradition.(pg 3)
2. One of the great strengths of the Gothic is its ability to articulate the voice of the other within its fancy dress disguise of stylized contestations.(pg 8)
3. Gothic interest in extreme states can also be seen to correlate with widespread social anxieties and fears.(pg 6)
4. Among the most striking features of the Gothic genre is the style of its architectural settings.(pg 7)
5. The chapter further explained that “certain unique cultural pressures led Americans to the Gothic as an expression of their very different conditions” (pg 4).