Gothic Literature

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept that Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a modern Gothic novel. It can be argued that Morrison uses many techniques derived from the Gothic period to master her story of Sethe, a former slave haunted by the ghost of her murdered daughter, Beloved. It is the many interwoven techniques of storytelling that make this novel a challenge to analyze but also so integral to the telling of America’s collective past. The novel encompasses trauma, making the reader uncomfortable with its subject matter.

Morrison tells a story not told before while weaving the spectacular into a very real situation. This novel makes the reader question, not only the content but how it is being conveyed, while masterfully, also complex in nature. Part of what makes Beloved and other modern Gothic novels so enthralling is its ability to convey mystery, darkness; the unknown as a realism to the reader. It parts its characters in situations that seem completely interesting, gives them a past that is tragic, maybe somewhat scandalous and puts the characters in a limbo of an unfamiliar place, where mystical events happen.

The modern Gothic novel builds from a varied thematic past where such techniques in conveying story seemed romantic in flavor but also horrific and fantastic. Prime examples of the Gothic novel come from the Bronte sisters. Both of them take a faraway location usually shrouded fog and create a mysterious romantic leading man whose behavior borders on villainous. They make the female overcome with lust for this anti-hero, painting the picture of a female character in distress, needing the strength of their man and his love. In this respect, the Gothic novel creates an atmosphere of suspense as strange events happen to the main character.

This notion of Magical Realism is not a new storytelling technique, but a forgotten one in need of evolution. The paragraph below examines in greater detail Gothic novel themes as a means of comparison for the modern Gothic novel, the Magical Realism used more and more today. Gothic Elements When many readers think of the Gothic novel, they think of horror, fantasy stories but what they do not think of is the beauty, the humanity conveyed in earlier works by the Bronte sisters. When considering the Gothic tradition, modern readers think of Anne Rice’s Vampire series and classic horror like Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stroker’s Dracula.

Not many think of the tradition has its roots in Wuthering Heights. The paragraphs below will touch on this foundation and discuss how modern authors like Morrison, Rice and even the King of Horror Stephen King find their writer’s wisdom in the true Gothic style. It is interesting to see how many such as King deviate from the style at times to write a more gory tale while Morrison relies on more thematic techniques of storytelling which require exploration of the character’s psyche. Another good example of realism incorporating suspense with a fantastic element is Henry James’ Turn of the Screw:

I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantation and coming into view of the house. What arrested me on the spot—and with shock much greater than any vision had allowed for—was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. (25-6) The Gothic tradition is based in extremes. Traditionalists from the cannon like Stephen Dailly claim the Gothic novel “get its names from the barbarous Goths that invaded England during the medieval period” (1). Still many Gothic elements are founded in the mysterious and exotic (Dailly 1).

Characteristics are founded in the following elements: (1) morbid setting, (2) extreme characters: woman in distress and a villainess romantic hero, (3) mystical themes bordering on horror such as ghosts and strange visions or dreams, and (4) death and rampant dysfunctional sexuality. Not all elements are present but the majority is in novels like Beloved, Wuthering Heights and Interview with a Vampire. These elements make such reading, while uncomfortable, delicious in breaking some set rules. Gothic novels create a taboo, the reader recognizes as a guilty pleasure.

The first unsettling effect Gothic displays is the dark disturbing setting of a foreign place sometimes a castle. This is meant to dull the senses, throw the situation off guard (Berenbaum 23). Part of what makes the setting so eerie is the pretense that the main character usually female is not supposed to be there but is put into the situation because of a family member’s sudden death and her loss of social status. She is often painted as the innocent victim; pure and angelic (Devendra 19) but generally conflicted by her past tragedy or lustful thoughts for her foil; the romantic anti-hero.

While this may shock the reader, while the anti-hero like Heathcliff or Lestat should be generally hated because of his past indiscretions; she cannot help but see his humanity and beauty. It is the societal struggle that makes him interesting and creates the romantic dream for the female in distress. It gives her something to hold on to during the tough times she faces. This is also creates great conflict for both the reader and characters which is the ultimate element of Gothic “cannot exist without pain” and here in lies the paradox “that pleasure is found in pain” (Berenbaum 30).

While the argument can be made that Beloved displays many modern traits like Magical Realism, one can also argue that these were stolen from the Gothic tradition. The entire novel is shrouded in mystery, in gloom based from trauma. It is this trauma born out of post-Reconstructionism and the former slave experience that becomes the taboo. It is the guilty pleasure for many readers as they strive to understand the novel’s true meaning. Much of the mystery or confusion is created by Morrison’s storytelling technique of flashback.

What makes the novel uncomfortable is Morrison’s structure for a non-linear storyline. At times the reader does not know they are in the middle of a flashback and this adds to the building of emotion. Valerie Smith argues this flashback technique or method of telling the story in circles makes waves as it feeds off itself over and over while remaining unconvoluted; it still “limits hegemonic authoritarian systems of knowledge” (346). Much of what we believe about the story is based on what Morrison is educating the reader about.

This explains not only the setting of the story but the historical context and Sethe’s inability to assimilate into her own present time to tell her account. The flashbacks continue in circles acting as symbolic technique to explain how life works. It is the historical taboo of post-slavery that influences the reader’s reasoning because there is nothing that can be done to intervene. There is nothing that the reader can do to make Sethe’s present condition better except continue reading but this acts as a motivation to keep the reader glued (Spargo 118).

This can be seen in other post-traumatic accounts found in modern literature such as Sophie’s Choice. This type of historical influence creates taboo, the shock but it is not applicable to just the African American experience but to the human experience. Gothic Setting and the Far Away Location Much of the novel happens in the setting of memory, the continued revisiting of one moment in time and how the decision for a mother to murder her own child impacts her present.

The setting of Beloved uses flashback to create gloominess but it is the feeling of Sethe and other residents of the house traveling not only in physical distance but also the passage of time that creates a haunting quality. While she is stuck in the past, she is also stuck in her new home in Ohio on 124 Bluestone Road. Part of what makes the setting gloomy is not just the historical context of recovering from human bondage but it is the collective notion and ideology of the passage of time. Not even time can heal the wounds.

The Underground Railroad while found in many undisclosed physical locations is really a state of mind but so is that period of history called Reconstructionism. For the novel, setting is more about time and characterization but as Margaret Atwood discusses “the setting is similarly divided: the countryside near Cincinnati, where the central characters have ended up, and a slave-hold plantation in Kentucky” (par 2). But the setting is also defined by people who believe in magic, folklore but also influenced by a broken society where they are themselves ghosts; shells of people.

While there is the memory of physical removal from Africa, there is also the notion of that: Slaves are motherless, fatherless, deprived of their mates, their children, their kin. It is a world in which people suddenly vanish and are never seen again…as a matter of everyday legal policy” (Atwood par 7). Sethe: Female in Distress, Exploring the Unknown, and Horror/Terror Elements Sethe is the female in distress but not in the traditionalist view of Gothic female character. She is a feminist. She is defined by her past, conflicted by her past decisions and not blinded by lust for an anti-hero.

Much of her is defined by her sexuality as a powerful tool. While her decision to murder her daughter made her powerful as she gave her child freedom in death that she still cannot attain in life; it takes on a shocking quality for the reader and can be seen in sexual symbolism later in the novel. In a time when slaves are seen as property, worth less than a cow or a dog to the white man, she pulls above this lack of humanity and uses her sexuality as a tool to facilitate her survival. This does not make her actions right on moral grounds but makes her a strong female role model in literature.

Throughout the canon, the female sex is seen as taboo, symbolic in fruit and nature. Beloved has sexual overtones because of Sethe’s ability to bear fruit. This is a common symbol found in literature; motherhood; the bearing of fruit and nourishing the child with milk. What makes Beloved different in expressing these overtones is when they happen. These sexual symbols present themselves as Beloved’s ghost materializes. Sethe begins to lactate when Beloved appears, “Just like the day she arrived at 124—sure enough, she had milk enough for all” (106). Is the ghost manifesting in Sethe or is this past of post-trauma?

Or is it Sethe’s decent into insanity? Later she continues to use this tool as a means of acquiring proper burial for her daughter. While many readers would be appalled by such an action, others would see how because of slavery, Sethe does not see herself of any value. Rape is not something brutal to her but the notion of not giving her offspring a proper burial is. She believes that without this burial the soul cannot return home to God, but how does this explain Beloved showing up later. Because Sethe is still struggling with the past, so does the ghost?

It is from the setting and the past that the horror element; the impending doom that the flashbacks carry emotionally; the unknown is born out of her being trapped in the house and her belief in the supernatural. It could be the ghost is just a figment of her imagination as a post-trauma sufferer. Atwood writes, “the day had gone blue without its sun, but she could still make out the black silhouettes of trees in the meadow beyond” (par 16). The past is constantly impacting her present. The doom and gloom of the past is surrounding her, trapping her in that house.

This only intensifies the haunting that the ghost represents. It is the element of the ghost that furthers the notion of the unknown for the reader and allows one to analyze Sethe’s character. It is the haunting that brings her story to the forefront of attention, acting as a catalyst for her to grow and deal with the circumstances of the past. Before she can make a better life for herself, she must descend into madness. It is the pure physicality of the haunting that remains true to the Gothic tradition and not necessarily the horror. Today’s reader associates horror with gore thanks to the blood and guts of Hollywood.

True Gothic does not rely on blood but the suspense built from the unknown. It is the fear of the unknown, the life without love that makes the story so compelling. “And, for some reason she could not immediately account for, the moment she got close enough to see the face, Sethe’s bladder filled to capacity” (Morrison 54). While the house is physically haunted by Beloved’s ghost, it is also haunted by the collective experience of all its residents. The story is told not only in flashback but also from different points of view. This adds to the suspense but building eeriness.

While the ghost is grown up, it has the mentality of a toddler while her sister Denver’s attitude is that typical of a boy crazy teenager. As it seems the trauma acts as a haunting embodied by the ghost, as the trauma becomes more real; it comes to the surface of Sethe’s reality; the more terror-ridden Beloved can be felt to Sethe and the others. As Sethe starts to deal with the past, Beloved starts to slip away. “She feels her thickness thinning, dissolving into nothing” (Morrison 129). Still by using varying points of view allows for differing tones of morality.

While no one can blame Sethe for her actions, in a way not only does Paul D lack compassion for her situation because her inability to share her story, while this fact distresses her a lot, she is punishing herself by allowing the trauma to continue. It is in her need to identify herself by a man that weakens her ability to learn from the ghost. It builds the suspense of the unknown further. By allowing the unknown to takeover, she is riddled with fear of Paul D leaving, and taking her esteem with him. She is afraid of anything changing and possibly surrendering to her guilt.

Morrison works to create the doubt that Beloved’s ghost is even real. Is she just a by product of Sethe’s trauma? A real ghost, a lost soul trying to get to Heaven? Is she a coping mechanism created by the folklore of post-slavery life? Is she a combination of things, a means for explaining the unexplainable? Or just a literary device? Maybe she is just part of the journey into the unknown that Sethe must take in order to heal from her experiences. In many ways, the ghost leaving is part of Sethe’s growth process and redemption.

By making the ghost a real person, physical to everyone, it is allowing Sethe to acknowledge Beloved’s existence. This in itself has a powerful cleansing influence upon her character. She starts acting differently, stronger and less defined by her setting and the people around her. First of all, she leaves the house to go to a picnic in which Sethe stands up to the white man. In this way, she now defined by her self-esteem and her own humanity and not the past. No longer is she a shell of a woman but someone who can function in reality.

The scene in which the ghost leaves is a pivotal moment for Sethe but also the other women of her new community. By unloading the baggage of Beloved’s death, she is about to have a future. The picnic acts a coming together of strong women with knowledge of who they are. While they are defined by their collective past, they are also looking to the future for the first time. It is only in the realization that Sethe is not alone that she rediscovers her strength as a person (272). She allows herself a taste of humanity. This story works to capture the essence of slavery’s aftermath for its characters.

It tells a truth created in flashback and ghost story. It aims to create mysticism only memory can illustrate. “The novel is meant to give grief a body, to make it palpable” (Gates 29). The characters are trapped in the present because they are imprisoned by the horrors of slavery. They are literally held hostage in their home, isolated from the outside world. In many ways Beloved represents a geographically realistic neo-slave narrative by presenting in flashback the experiences of Sethe. This story also has the fantastic element of a ghost who later becomes flesh and bone.

The paragraphs below explore the characters memories and the magical realism of a ghost. Memory affects the character of Sethe in a way that illustrates the pain and grief of her past enslavement. Sethe is living with the memory of killing her two old year daughter to save her from the horror of slavery while she herself was struggling to attain freedom. As a result of this action, she is unable to forgive herself and lives trapped in this memory. As much as this is a very private pain, it dominates her and comes to life in her house.

The memory affects the other occupants of the house and even drives her sons to leave. Sethe believes that nothing can destroy a memory, not even destroying the physical evidence. The following quote exhibits this idea: It’s so hard for me to believe in [time]. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. . . . But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place-the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. (Morrison 36)

In essence, this means that the soul takes every experience with it. I believe her relationship with this memory only deepens over time and does not change for the better. Even the attempt to leave her happy with her new marriage leaves the reader feeling that she is still coping. Morrison writes, “the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The ‘better life’ she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one” (42). This signifies that her memories leave her static in the present. It is almost as if nothing new can happen to her until she lets the past go.

Still this is likely as Morrison writes “but her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day” (70). It is through the flashback images the reader learns of slavery and Sethe’s experience escaping but it also through Morrison’s description of the present that reader begins to understand the environment of Reconstruction. These are people still being defined by their enslavement. “The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind.

And if it didn’t stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out. Slave life; freed life-every day was a test and a trial. Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution you were a problem” (256). This theme is never so evident than with Morrison’s use of magical realism in the form of Beloved the ghost. “This awkward spirit shakes the furniture, puts tiny handprints on the cakes, shatters mirrors, Sethe and Denver live stolidly in the chaos, emotionally frozen” (Gates 28). The physical ghost acts as an embodiment of Sethe’s sorrow and guilt.

The consequence of Beloved’s actions only feed Sethe’s inability to function in the present. Whether or not the ghost is an embodiment of Sethe’s guilt, insanity, folklore, an actual real ghost, the symbolic representation of the house’s negative feelings due to historical context, or the collective sadness and unknown of the residents’ terror; remains to be seen. This is an unknown; a mystery Morrison leaves for the reader to decide. Conclusion In conclusion, Beloved connected with the reader on many levels. In times of war and tragedy, such themes are not uncommon.

One is reminded of Sophie’s Choice where the heroine had to make a similar yet devastating decision about her children. Still Morrison used a ghost to exhibit just how much the past has followed Sethe. Such technique can be found in other modern novels by Isabelle Allende and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez where the fantastic take on realistic qualities. The purpose of this paper was to explore the concept that Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a modern Gothic novel. It can be argued that Morrison used many techniques derived from the Gothic period to master her story of Sethe, a former slave haunted by the ghost of her murdered daughter, Beloved.

The novel has many interwoven techniques of storytelling that make reading a challenge to analyze but also so integral to the telling of America’s collective past. As a collective, our history has pain that can be found beautiful. The novel encompassed trauma, making the reader uncomfortable with its subject matter, mainly Sethe’s sexuality as a powerful, feministic tool. Morrison tells a story not told before while weaving the spectacular into a very real situation and therefore created a much different storytelling style furthering the evolution of the modern novel.

This novel made the reader question, not only the content but how it was being conveyed, while masterfully, also complex in nature. While it is considered a modern novel, it redefined many Gothic elements. Part of what made Beloved and other modern Gothic novels so enthralling was its ability to convey mystery, darkness; the unknown as a realism to the reader. It put its characters in situations that seemed completely interesting, gave them a past that was tragic, maybe somewhat scandalous and put the characters in a limbo of an unfamiliar place, where mystical events happened.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. “Jaunted By Their Nightmares. ” New York Times 13 Sept. 1987, natl. ed. : Arts and Entertainment section. Atwood explains Morrison’s story of grief and death of Sethe’s little girl touching on Slavery’s influence on modern society. She looks at Gothic techniques used to tell a modern story while discussing Sethe’s insanity and humanity. Berenbaum, Linda. The Gothic Imagination. East Brunswick, New Jersey: Associated University Press, Ltd. , 1948. This author analyzes Wuthering Heights from the thematic view point of Gothic novel stylings.

She looks to Bronte’s writing as a means of justifying the non-horror of Gothic novels but the humanity involved. In doing this, she paints the novel as being very Gothic and also scary. In this respect, the argument backfires but also legitimizes the Gothic novel as a genre. Dailly, Stephen. “The Gothic Novel. ” Online. Internet. Available FTP: http://www. btinternet. com/Stephen. dailly/writing/resources/gothic. htm Devendra, Varma, The Gothic Flame. London: Arthur Baker Ltd. , and Morrison and Gibb Ltd. , 1957.

Author looks to traditional thematic to argue that Gothic novels display two worlds. He also looks to history to back up this point. Gates, Henry Louis and Appiah, K. A. , ed. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press, Inc. , 1993. Editors analyze Toni Morrison’s writing, specifically Beloved in order to argue that the novel does not reflect the negative victimism of slavery but uses storytelling as a means to entertain such a serious subject. They argue that Beloved can also be seen as ghost story.

James, Henry. Turn of the Screw. New York: Pocket Books, 1941 James’ tale of suspense and woman haunting the man who done her wrong and is one of the first times in literature a ghost seems realistic. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. Morrison’s groundbreaking story of one woman’s life after slavery and ghosts that remain in the present. This story by using flashbacks tells the story of a woman murdering her baby daughter so that that daughter does not have to live in slavery. This novel displays how one’s action’s continues to live on inside of them and later materialize as a ghost.

It also conveys how even in American modern society, the collective history still remains in shadows and needs to be addressed, no matter how uncomfortable. Smith, Valerie. “Circling the Subject: History and Narrative in Beloved. ” Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and K. A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993. 342-55. Smith analyzes Morrison’s use of flashback as a cyclical technique not used before in literature. Spargo, R. Clifton. “Trauma and the spectres of enslavement in Morrison’s Beloved. ” Mosaic 35. 1 (2002): 113-130. Spargo discusses history as a grounds for telling fictional stories.

For only the antique style of architecture is conceived in a purely objective spirit; the Gothic style is more in the subjective spirit. American Gothic architecture was the outcome of a way of thought, the product of a special kind of imagination. Every one will easily be able to see clearly how from the fundamental thought and the peculiarities of Gothic architecture, there arises that mysterious and hyperphysical character which is attributed to it. It principally arises from the fact that here the arbitrary has taken the place of the purely rational, which makes itself known as the thorough adoption of the means to the end.

The many things that are really aimless, but yet are so carefully perfected, raise the assumption of unknown, unfathomed, and secret ends, i. e. , give the appearance of mystery. On the other hand, the brilliant side of Gothic churches is the interior; because here the effect of the groined vaulting borne by slender, crystalline, aspiring pillars, raised high aloft, and, all burden having disappeared, promising eternal security, impresses the mind; while most of the faults which have been mentioned lie upon the outside.

In antique buildings the external side is the most advantageous, because there we see better the support and the burden; in the interior, on the other hand, the flat roof always retains something depressing and prosaic. For the most part, also, in the temples of the ancients, while the outworks were many and great, the interior proper was small. An appearance of sublimity is gained from the hemispherical vault of a cupola, as in the Pantheon, of which, therefore, the Italians also, building in this style, have made a most extensive use.

What determines this is, that the ancients, as southern peoples, lived more in the open air than the northern nations who have produced the Gothic style of architecture. Whoever, then, absolutely insists upon Gothic architecture being accepted as an essential and authorized style may, if he is also fond of analogies, regard it as the negative pole of architecture, or, again, as its minor key.

With the recent explosion of Gothic criticism, scholars have failed to juxtapose Gothic novels and dramas with archival architectural sources to explore the interrelationship between literature and architecture in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. The scholars who have rescued the Gothic novel from literary history’s dust heap have provided cultural historians with a base from which to examine the sweeping influence of this significant literary genre.

In the United States, Gothic novels and Scott’s historical romances (which were inspired by Gothic pioneers Walpole and Radcliffe), had an enormous impact on architecture in the period between 1800 and 1850. The groundwork in Gothic literary scholarship allows us to move beyond literature to examine how the Gothic seeps into other forms of artistic creation. One of the earliest American architects to enjoy Gothic novels was Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820).

Although born in Great Britain and educated in Europe, Latrobe immigrated to the United States at the age of thirty-one, arriving in March 1796. About three months after relocating to Virginia, Latrobe wrote in his journal that he found Radcliffe’s descriptions of buildings so “successful” that he “once endeavored to plan the Castle of Udolpho from Radcliffe’s account of it and found it impossible” . Latrobe began experimenting with Gothic architectural forms for residential design in the United States in 1799.

Latrobe’s Gothic work includes Sedgeley (built for William Crammond near Philadelphia in 1799 and considered the first Gothic Revival house in the United States); the Baltimore Cathedral design (unexecuted; 1805); Christ Church in Washington, DC (1806-07); the Bank of Philadelphia (1807-08); and St. Paul’s in Alexandria, Virginia (1817) (see photos). But, overall, Latrobe’s Gothic output pales in comparison to his rational neoclassical efforts such as the Bank of Pennsylvania (1799-1801). His Gothic Revival designs are symmetrical with superficial Gothic detailing.

For example, Sedgeley is a geometric form Gothicized by the placement of pointed arch windows in the pavilions that protrude from the corners of the house. Despite this Gothic touch, there is little mystery or surprise in store for the observer of Latrobe’s Gothic creations. Although he clearly read Radcliffe’s books and was quite possibly influenced by them, he did not translate the mysterious, rambling architectural spaces of her stories into his own architecture. Other American architects, too, dabbled in Gothic Revival design before the 1830s. Some notable examples include Maxmillan Godefroy’s St.

Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore (1806); Charles Bulfinch’s Federal Street Church in Boston (1809); and the unexecuted design for Columbia College (1813) by James Renwick Sr. , engineer and father of the architect James Renwick. Daniel Wadsworth, who designed for himself a Gothic Revival villa called Monte Video (c. 1805-1809) near Hartford, Connecticut, explained that, to him, the Gothic style was not inherently menacing as are the castles and convents of Gothic novels: “There is nothing in the mere forms or embellishments of the pointed style [… ] in the least adapted to convey to the mind the impression of Gothic Gloom” .

His house bears out this belief; Gothic details appear as an afterthought, a decorative motif rather than a programmatic agenda. It was not until the 1830s and 1840s that American Gothic Revival architecture came of age. The most prominent designer of Gothic residences in this period was Davis. Davis was born in New York City in 1803 and, during his boyhood, lived in New Jersey and New York. When he was sixteen, he moved to Alexandria, Virginia, to learn a trade with his older brother Samuel. Davis worked as a type compositor in the newspaper office.

Besides work, his four years at Alexandria were filled with two of his favourite activities: reading and acting. An amateur actor who performed in several plays while he was in Virginia, Davis was a voracious reader as well. His two pocket diaries from this period, preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are filled with youthful exuberance. Often, Davis would begin an entry with an illustration from a text, which would then be excerpted in his own handwriting. Among the dramas that he read and illustrated were Maturin’s Bertram: or the Castle of St.

Aidobrand and Heinrich Zschokke’s Abadilino. Maturin was an Irish Gothic novelist and dramatist who corresponded with an encouraging Scott. After reading Maturin’s drama Bertram, Scott wrote that the character of Bertram had a “Satanic dignity which is often truly sublime” . Starring Edmund Kean, Bertram opened on 9 May 1816 at the Drury Lane Theatre in London, with the support of Lord Byron, who was impressed with the play. In one of his pocket diaries, Davis made an illustration of the play’s first act, showing a ship tossed on a stormy sea in view of a Gothic convent.

The setting of the play is quintessentially Gothic from the “rock-based turrets” of the convent to the moonlit “terrassed rampart” of the castle of Aldobrand. Davis copied an excerpt from the play into his diary and as the budding actor included Bertram in his list of recitations. While he was a youth in Alexandria, Davis engaged in amateur theatricals and became interested in stage design. He dreamed of becoming a professional actor. Davis’s illustration filters the Shakespearean scene through contemporary Gothic, emphasizing the mysterious flicker of the nightstand candle and the inky blackness of unknowable architectural spaces.

At the age of twenty, Davis moved to New York City, and his fascination with the theatre continued. In the evenings, he frequented the theatre and was on the free list at both the Park Theater and the Castle Garden Theater in 1826 and 1828. He also expressed his love of drama in his artistic work. In 1825, he completed a study for a proscenium featuring Egyptian columns and Greek bas-relief sculpture and numerous portraits of actors in character, including “Brutus in the Rostrum” and “Mr. Kemble as Roma”. That so early in his life Davis was fascinated with the theatre is significant to his later Gothic Revival architectural creations.

The dramatic images he drew for his youthful diaries display his acute interest in stage design and scenography. Indeed, Gothic Revival architecture is inherently theatrical, a quality often commented upon by architecture critics. Davis often used trompe-l’oeil materials to create theatrical effects, substituting plaster for stone. Davis’s houses, then, become stage sets, in which the owners’ mediaeval fantasies, inspired by Gothic romances, can take flight. While still in Alexandria, Davis’s sensible older brother bristled at what he perceived to be the younger Davis’s useless pastime of reading Gothic books.

Later in life, Davis wrote to William Dunlap about himself in the third person for Dunlap’s History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States: “Like another Franklin, strongly addicted to reading, he limited himself to the accomplishment of a fixed task, and being a quick compositor, he would soon complete it, and fly to his books, but not like Franklin, to books of science and useful learning, but to works of imagination, poetry, and the drama; whence, however, he imbibed a portion of that high imaginative spirit so necessary to constitute an artist destined to practise in the field of invention”.

Davis’s brother condemned such reading and turned Davis’s attention to “history, biography and antiquities, to language and the first principles of the mathematics”. The architectural allure of Gothic literature fascinated Davis. As a young man, Davis was known to “pass hours in puzzling over the plan of some ancient castle of romance, arranging the trap doors, subterraneous passages, and drawbridges, as pictorial embellishment was the least of his care, invention all his aim”.

Any Gothic novel of the late eighteenth century may have been the subject of his artistic dreaming, but most likely he is referring here to either Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto or Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, two of the most popular and influential of the Gothic novels. Davis’s catalogue of books shows that he owned both books. The image depicts a partly ruinous labyrinthine space with a multitude of pointed arches leading to mysterious staircases (perhaps inspired by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Carceri). Light filters in through barred windows.

This drawing shows his early interest in the Gothic underworld, which is described in detail in The Castle of Otranto. The castle of Otranto (see photo) contains intricate subterranean passages that lead from the castle to the church of St. Nicholas, and through which the virtuous Isabella is chased by the lustful Manfred. Scott cannot be considered a Gothic novelist in the same way that his predecessors Walpole and Radcliffe are. Scott’s genre is historical romance, but the influence of the Gothic is omnipresent in his work.

From his earliest days and throughout his life, Scott read tales of terror. In 1812, after the success of his three poems and before he began writing his Waverley novel series, Scott purchased 110 acres, upon which he built his elaborate Gothic castle (1812-1815; enlarged in 1819). He named his new home Abbotsford after the monks of Meirose Abbey. The architect was William Atkinson. Abbotsford has been described as “an asymmetrical pile of towers, turrets, stepped gables, oriels, pinnacles, crenelated parapets, and clustered chimney stacks, all assembled with calculated irregularity”.

Visitors flocked to Abbotsford to see the author and his residence first-hand, and, according to Thomas Carlyle, Abbotsford soon “became infested to a great degree with tourists, wonder-hunters, and all that fatal species of people”. Architectural historians often praise Strawberry Hill for introducing asymmetry into British domestic design and historicism into the Gothic Revival. But it is also important for another reason: the castle inspired Walpole to write his Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764.

In A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, Walpole writes that Strawberry Hill is “a very proper habitation of, as it was the scene that inspired, the author of The Castle of Otranto”. One June morning, Walpole awoke from a dream: “I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled, like mine, with ) and that, on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase, I saw a gigantic hand in armor” (Early 88). That evening, Walpole sat down to write The Castle of Otranto.

The setting of the story, as Walpole tells us in the preface, is “undoubtedly laid in some real castle”; indeed, as W. S. Lewis has shown, the rooms at Strawberry Hill and those in the pages of The Castle of Otranto correspond. Read by British and American readers alike, The Castle of Otranto enjoyed popularity long after Walpole’s death in 1797. About the castle, Gilmor wrote: Tis in the most beautiful Gothic (light) style. Much cut up into small rooms, none, except the long picture gallery being large. Some of the ceilings beautifully gilded others beautifully fitted in wood or scagliola.

But all things, wainscottings, – door-fireplaces – all Gothic. [… ] These same rooms crammed – most literally crammed – with chef d’oeuvres of Antient and modern paintings, statuary; sarcophaguses, Bronzes and silver carvings of Benvenuto Cellini and others. [… ] In this superb cabinet of curiosities for such the Gothic castle deserves to be called, I strolled delighted. On 21 September 1832, not long after Gilmor’s return in late 1830 or early 1831, Scott died. Two weeks later, on 5 October 1832, Davis makes his first notes on Glen Ellen in his day book.

Perhaps Gilmor may have conceived of Glen Ellen as a tribute or romantic memorial to his genial host at Abbotsford. Indeed, as William Pierson has shown, the plans of Abbotsford and Glen Ellen both display a progression from left to right of octagonal corner turret to octagonal bay to square corner tower. But Abbotsford is not the only source for Glen Ellen. Gilmor was very impressed with the rococo Gothic he saw at Strawberry Hill, and the interior decoration of Walpole’s residence becomes the inspiration for the exterior ornamentation at Glen Ellen.

The battlements, pinnacles, towers, and pointed arch windows all recall Strawberry Hill, and the long rectangular parlour mirrors Walpole’s mediaeval gallery. Both Abbotsford and Strawberry Hill are sited along rivers; it is significant, then, that Gilmor chose a site for Glen Ellen on the Gunpowder River, twelve miles north of Baltimore. While Town, Davis, and Gilmor were clearly indebted to Walpole and Atkinson, Glen Ellen is quite unlike anything that had come before it in American architecture.

Most striking is its adoption of the complete Gothic program: it is asymmetrical in plan and elevation; its rooms are of disproportionate sizes; its ornamentation is both whimsical and reliant on recognizable mediaeval architectural forms. Glen Ellen is certainly not a repetition of Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s and Daniel Wadsworth’s earlier forays into the Gothic Revival style for domestic architecture. Unlike Sedgeley and Monte Video, where Gothic Revival ornament appears as an afterthought, Glen Ellen wears its mediaeval styling in a more assertive manner.

Here Town and Davis enlisted the picturesque element of surprise; the beholder of Glen Ellen views a shifting facade with unexpected tower protrusions and heavily ornamented bay windows. Although light and airy Glen Ellen lacks the gloom of Radcliffe’s architectural spaces, the architects do create a villa in which the element of surprise is paramount. What is most significant about Glen Ellen is its conception as a place of fantasy, a literary indulgence to whet the Gothic appetite of its well-travelled owner.

That Glen Ellen imitates the facade of Abbotsford or the interior ornamentation of Strawberry Hill is important; but more momentous is the idea of Glen Ellen as a retreat into the mediaeval world popularized by Gothic novels and historical romances. But Glen Ellen is transformed into stone, a constant reminder of its owner’s preferred reading material. With Glen Ellen, Gilmor pays homage to his favourite writers, thus participating in the cult of the Gothic author. Although he is the first, Gilmor will not be the last to yield to his literary fantasies by creating a permanent reminder of his Gothic passion.

Influenced by Gothic novels and historical romance s, American writers James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving Gothicized their houses (Otsego Hall and Sunnyside, respectively) after visiting Gothic sites in Europe. After Glen Ellen, Davis went on to design numerous Gothic Revival cottages and villas, including his masterpiece, Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, New York (1838; 1865). Why were American architects, artists, and their clients so interested in mediaeval architecture? Their tell us a great deal.

Mediaeval architecture plays a crucial role in Gothic novels and historical romances, leading some curious readers to visit mediaeval and Gothic Revival architectural sites related to their favourite novels. That American Gothic Revival architecture was closely related to the fictional works of writers such as Radcliffe and Scott is highlighted by a nineteenth-century observer’s comments on a Gothic Revival building in New York City. Thomas Aldrich Bailey wrote in 1866 about the University of the City of New York (now New York University; original building demolished) on Washington Square: “There isn’t a more gloomy structure outside of Mrs.

Radcliff’s [sic] romances, and we hold that few men could pass a week in these lugubrious chambers, without adding a morbid streak to their natures – the genial immates [sic] to the contrary notwithstanding”. Usually, though, the Gothic Revival buildings constructed in the United States in this period were anything but gloomy. Like Strawberry Hill, Davis’s designs were light and airy; delicate rather than dark and massive (Davis does begin to experiment more with fortified castle designs in the 1850s).

As Janice Schimmelman has argued, Scott’s novels recast the Gothic architectural style, moving it away from the barbarism associated with the Middle Ages and toward a more domestic ideal. An American author who wrote at the same time as Scott sums it up nicely by saying, “A castle without a ghost is fit for nothing but to live in”. Certain Gothic work in the Boston neighborhood, by Solomon Willard and Gridley Bryant, has a kind of brutal power because of its simple granite treatment.

But these early gray and lowering edifices, despite their pointed windows and their primitive tracery, are scarcely within the true Gothic tenor. That remained almost unknown in this country until suddenly, between 1835 and 1850, it was given abundant expression in the work of three architects -Richard Upjohn, James Renwick, and Minard Lafever. Upjohn, in Trinity Church, set a tradition for American church architecture which has hardly died yet; and Renwick, in Grace Church in New York (see photo), showed the exquisite richness that Gothic could give.

Minard Lafever’s work is more daring, more original, and less correct, but in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn (see photo), only slightly later than Trinity and Grace, he achieved a combination of lavish detail, imaginative variations on Gothic themes, and a general effectiveness of proportion and composition which make it one of the most successful, as it is certainly the most American, of all these early Gothic Revival churches.

Yet even in these, correct as they were in detail, beautiful in mass and line, there was always a certain sense of unreality. The old tradition of integrity in structure, on which the best Greek Revival architects had so insistently based their work, was breaking down. Romanticism, with its emphasis on the effect and its comparative lack of interest in how the effect was produced, was sapping at the whole integral basis of architecture.

These attractive Gothic churches were, all of them, content with lath-and-plaster vaults. In them the last connections between building methods and building form disappeared, and in their very success they did much to establish in America the disastrous separation between engineering and architecture which was to curse American building for two generations.

The best of the American Gothic work remains in its simpler, its less ostentatious, monuments: the little churches in which wood was allowed frankly to be itself, as in the small frame chapels which Upjohn designed for country villages and distant mission stations; and the frank carpenter Gothic of the picturesque high-gabled cottages which rose so bewitchingly embowered in heavy trees along many of our Eastern village streets. The polychrome Victorian Gothic of England also became a brief American fashion.

A number of architects, especially in New York and later in early Chicago, fell under the spell of Ruskin’s persuasive writing, and sought as he did to create a modern, freely designed, inventive, nineteenth-century Gothic. But here also the strings that bound America and England seemed too tenuous to hold for long; and in spite of the occasional appealing successes of the style – such as the old National Academy of Design with its black-and-white marble front, designed by Peter B.

Wight, and some of Renwick’s city houses – the Victorian Gothic was doomed in America to swift disintegration into the cheapest and most illogical copying of its most obvious mannerisms, and a complete negation of its essential foundations. It became in a sense a caricature, to be rapidly swallowed up in the confusion of eclecticism which the last quarter of the century brought with it. If we might sum up French Gothic as architecture of clear and structural power, and English as the architecture of personalized rural charm, American Gothic would be the architecture of experimental and dynamic zest.

American Gothic architecture was much more than the solution of building problems; it was also the expression of a new America that had been gradually coming into being – a new America which was the result of the gradual decay of the feudal system under the impact of trade, prosperity, and the growth of national feeling. The Gothic Revival in America was more a matter of intellectual approach than of architectural work. The sudden new enthusiasm for medieval work made all America passionately aware of its amazing architectural wealth, and also acutely conscious of the disintegration which threatened ruin to so many of the medieval structures.

Nowhere did the Gothic Revival have a greater and a more revolutionary effect than in America, which had given it its first expression, for nowhere else were the forces behind it so irresistibly strong. In Germany, nationalism had led the architects of the romantic age into the byways of Romanesque and of Renaissance. In France, the strong classic traditions of the Ecole des Beaux Arts held firm against all the attacks of the romanticists and gave, at least to the official work, the requisite classic stamp.

But, in America, religious fervor, so closely allied to the desires of the court and the government, made the drive toward Gothic design irrepressible, and there was no academic and classic tradition powerful enough to withstand it. Furthermore, the movement was blessed with extremely brilliant and articulate writers, who had the gift not only of interesting the specialist but of moving the general population. Gothic architecture was best now because it was the most Christian, later because it was the most creative and least imitative, then again because it was the most honest – whatever that might mean.

The religious facets of the movement had an even greater importance. The whole American church was exercised more and more about the fundamental problems of ritualism and historical tradition. The most important ecclesiastical thinkers were reacting against the routine secularism of the eighteenthcentury church, demanding not only greater seriousness and a more intense devotion to Christian ideals, but also expressing their conviction that the medieval church had been a vital force and medieval devotion a vivid experience that had been subsequently lost, and that therefore the easiest way to reform the church was by a return to medievalism.

Of the religious controversies these ideas aroused it is not necessary to particularize. Also important is the fact that everywhere these religious controversies focused attention on medieval church architecture, and that there was the closest relationship between architecture and ritual. Therefore, the theory went, if it was necessary to return to the medieval conception of Christianity, it was equally essential to return to medievalism in church design. There more subtle factor behind the Gothic Revival in architecture.

The word “romanticism” has accumulated so many different meanings in the course of a century of criticism that it is necessary to be more precise. Behind the new interest in medieval architecture went a search for emotional expression which was a new thing. Romanticism means many more things than mere antiquarianism, for from the point of view of a mere turn to the past the Classic Revivals might also be considered romantic; but, as we have seen, the architects of the Classic Revival were striving primarily for form which should be serene, well composed, consistent, harmonious, adequate.

The true romanticist is not satisfied with this. He demands more; he demands that architecture shall be “expressive” – that is, that it shall aim definitely at expressing specific emotions such as religious awe, grandeur, gaiety, intimacy, sadness. He seeks to make architecture as expressive and as personal as a lyric poem, and oftentimes this demand for emotional expression he makes superior to any other claims.

All architecture is expressive; but, whereas the classic architect allows the expression to arise naturally from forms developed in the common-sense solution of his problem, the true romantic seeks expression first, with a definite self-conscious urge. To the romantic architect of the mid-nineteenth century, Romanesque and Gothic had somehow come to seem more emotional than the other styles. References Andrews, Wayne. American Gothic: Its Origins, Its Trials. Its Triumphs. New York: Random House, 1975. Donoghue, John.

Alexander Jackson Davis, Romantic Architect, 1803-1892. New York: Arno Press, 1982. Dunlap, William. “History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States. 1834. ” Vol. 3. Ed. Alexander Wyckoff. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1965. Early, James. Romanticism and American Architecture. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965. Latrobe, Benjamin Henry. “The Virginia Journais of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1795-1798. ” Vol. 1. Ed. Edward C. Carter II. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977. Lougy, Robert E. Charles Robert Maturin. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1975.

Pierson, William H. , Jr. American Buildings and Their Architects: Technology and the Picturesque, The Corporate and the Early Gothic Styles. 1978. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1980. Robertson, Fiona. Legitimate Histories: Scott; Gothic, and the Authorities of Fiction. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. Schimmelman, Janice Gayle. The Spirit of the Gothic: The Gothic Revival House in Nineteenth-Century America. Diss. U of Michigan, 1980. Snadon, Patrick. A. J. Davis and the Gothic Revival Castle in America, 1832-1865. Diss. Cornell U, 1988.

The Middle Ages covered a thousand year p. The period began after the schism of the fifth century in which the Roman empire was split into east and west. It continued until the start of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. The medieval period was notable for the origins and development of Gothic architecture. Because there was so much upheaval during the Middle Ages, the one constant was the Church. At that time the only denomination was Catholic.

The Church was usually the largest structure in the medieval environment and was a main gathering place in which a variety of functions (which today would be provided by civic buildings), occurred. (The Middle Ages, 1). Since the holy Catholic Church had already been a powerful institution at the conclusion of the Roman Empire, it continued to be the unifying force among the many small kingdoms that would develop into Europe. Replete with its own laws and large coffers, it wielded much influence during this time ( Enter the Middle Ages, 1).

In addition, it had kept much from the ruins of the ancient world and became one of the centers of learning during during the Middle Ages. Not only did the Church preserve much of classical Latin knowledge, but it also maintained the art of writing.

The cathedrals developed learning specialties such as rhetoric or logic in schools named cathedral schools. (Middle Ages, Learners. Org, 1). Whether one’s station was that of lowly peasant or of noble lord, the Church touched everyone’s life. Rank or class did not matter. Within towns , with the exception of a small amount of Jews, everyone in Europe was Christian. However, beyond the core areas of western Europe, there remained many people with little or no contact with either Christianity or classical culture.

Outside the deurbanized remnants of cities the power of the central government was greatly lessened and governmental authority was delegated to local lords who supported themselves directly from the territories over which they held power. This was the beginning of the feudal system ( Enter the Middle Ages, 1). For safety and defense people in the Middle Ages formed small communities around a central lord or master, living on a manor , which consisted of the castle, the church, the village, and outlying farmland. In exchange for living on his land, the lord gave protection to his serfs. Manors were isolated with occasional visits from peddlers, pilgrims on their way to the Crusades, or soldiers from other fiefdoms. (Sobol, 22).

Bishops, who were frequently wealthy, and came from noble families, ruled over a group of parishes called a diocese. Parish priests, however, came from humbler backgrounds and often had little education. The village priest tended the poor and sick, and if he was capable, taught Latin and the Bible to the youth of the village. (Enter the Middle Ages, 2). Medieval cathedrals sometimes functioned as marketplaces with the different portals of the marketplaces containing sellers with their produce: items such as textiles might be at one end, while fuel, vegetables, and meat at another. Sometimes the clergy tried to put a stop to the marketers. They tried to block access to the cathedral. But it was in vain.

The sellers were not taxed on the items they sold inside the church; while the items they sold outside were. (Chartres, 1). The Church was all in all during medieval times. From the moment of its baptism a few days after birth, a child began its life of service to the Lord and to His Church. As the child developed , it would be taught basic prayers- and unless ill- would go to church every week. Every person was required to pay heavy taxes to support the Church.

The reward for this was being shown the way to everlasting life and happiness- a great trade off for lives that were often short and difficult. In addition to collecting taxes, the Church also granted special favors for people who wanted assurance of a place in heaven. Gifts in the form of land, crops, flocks, and even serfs scrambled into the coffers. All this largess allowed the Church to become very powerful. As a result, it often employed this power to influence kinds and do as they wanted. (Enter the Middle Ages, 2). The power continued with the Pope who was considered to be God’s representative on earth. If someone went against the Church, the Pope could excommunicate them.

This meant that the person could not attend any more church services or receive the sacrament, thus ensuring that they would go straight to hell when they died. At a time when everyone believed in heaven and hell, and all belonged to the Church, this excommunication was an unbearable horror. (Ibid, 2). The population increased throughout the Middle Ages. As it expanded in the 12th century, the type of church that had previously been used for worship; the ones built in the Roman or Romanesque style, with round arched roofs, became too small. Some of the grand cathedrals became maxed to their structural limits.

Although they built more mightily, going ever higher and larger, it appeared to be too much and these grander edifices collapsed within a century or less of their construction ( Enter the Middle Ages, 3). Enter a man who was about to change the style of these Middle Age churches and with it, bring forth a whole new field of architecture- gothic. Abbe Suger had been affiliated with the Church of Saint Denis in Paris for a good part of his life. The building needed repairs, so he took on the reconstruction, bringing in the finest of workers from the Low countries and from Italy.

For his inspiration, Abbe Suger looked to Canterbury Cathedral. Pilgrimages had been an important part of religious life in the Middle Ages as people journeyed to visit religious shrines. Suger particularly admired Canterbury Cathedral for its stained glass windows. Desirous of creating a physical representation of the the Heavenly Jerusalem, Suger aimed for a place of light that would speak of the positive aspects of the religious life: Redemption as opposed to the hellfire and damnation that was constantly being sermonized in the dark and dank Romanesque churches.

Suger conceived of the idea “lux continua” – this theory would transform his church into one of radiance and splendor, magnifying the spirit. He and his team gave themselves to the reconstruction of the church. After a four year renovation, the choir was completed in 1144. In a magnificent ceremony, complete with King Louis VI and Eleanor, and other notables, the church was dedicated to the Lord. With its thin columns, stained glass windows, and a sense of verticality, the choir of Saint Denis originated the elements that would be developed further during the Gothic period. Now architects were able to expand Saint Denis upward to more than twice the height of the earlier cathedral and free the walls to be filled with stained glass.

The great expanse of glass helped Abbe Suger with his goal of “lux continua”. These brightly colored stained glass windows were decorated with parables and stories of the Bible that would help inform the illiterate in their faith. Trade guilds funded other windows and the decorations contained within demonstrated what life was like during this medieval time. Saint Denis was designed along the lines of sacred geometry: the use of number angles, shapes that mirror the principle of the faithful believer, and flying buttresses that would support those higher ceilings and slender columns; the verticality suggesting aspirations to heaven Additionally, Saint Denis contained a golden cross and a golden altar where kings and nobles donated their precious jewels (Gothic Art and Abbe Suger, 1)

The influence this church had over French architecture was profound because it was also a political symbol. Suger virtually ran the kingdom while Louis VI was away on the Crusade. Yet for Suger, the Church was neither political symbol nor an architectural one, but solely a religious symbol. His main goal in its design was to honor God and Saint Denis. Suger had become fascinated by the religious implications of the light. He had inscribed on the main doors, which are representative of the passion and resurrection of Christ: The noble work is bright, but being nobly bright; That work should brighten the minds, allowing

Them to travel through the light. To the truth where Christianity is the true door (Simson,111). The Gothic style had emerged. It would give rise to the development of many other buildings and cathedrals who copied its characteristics, the most visible of which was its verticality. A skeletal stone structure, pointed arches using the ovoid shape, ribbed vaults, clustered columns, sharply pointed spires, flying buttresses and sculptural gargoyles became part of the Gothic look. (The History of Art, 255).

One of the most superlative examples of Gothic architecture can be found in Chartres Cathedral. Chartres, fifty miles from Paris, is considered to be extremely outstanding in its use of the Gothic elements. It was rebuilt in the Gothic style after a fire had decimated the building. Called a miracle of stained glass and stone, it was created in the form of a cruciform and dedicated in 1260. Chartres contains one of the most complete collections of medieval stained glass in the world. The Rose Window contains a sun and a rose.

Jesus Christ, the Son, represents the sun, while Mary is the rose without thorns. Also there are depictions of kings and lords in additional stained glass, but their lower elevation connotes submission to the Lord. Along with many stained glass windows containing biblical stories which are typological allegories between the Old Testament prophecies and the New Testament, there is much statuary. Rows of arches and niches within the arches contain the statues. (Chartres,Online 1). Within the confines of the Cathedral is a sacred relic that was given by King Charlemagne. It is called the “Sancta Camisia,” and is said to be clothing worn by Mary.

Charlemagne received it on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This clothing, also called the cloak of the Virgin, was the source of much pilgrimage during the medieval times. The Cathedral was the life of the town and these pilgrimages brought in much revenue that the town depended upon. These pilgrimages occurred four times a year. Chartres, Wikipedia, 1). Although Raphael despised the Gothic style and named it derisively after the savage Goths who had ransacked Rome, the style survived and is an everlasting style of beauty and majesty. It is a wonderful contribution from the Middle Ages.

Gothic Elements In Jaws In June of 1995, Director Steven Spielberg released a terrifying thriller called Jaws. In this film a gigantic great white shark terrorizes a small island, which is solely dependent on its beach for revenue. This movie was so scary because it is much more likely happen, unlike a zombie apocalypse or alien attack. People were so afraid of shark attacks they stayed far away from the beaches. Spielberg used gothic elements in his movie Jaws.

The way he used them scared and still scares people today. The scene I chose is where Hooper finds Ben Gardener’s sunken boat. Leading up to this scene Hooper and Broody are on Hoper’s boat and Hooper is going to dive into the water to search for the elusive shark. When Hooper dives he diving by a Ben Gardener’s shark ravaged boat. One of the gothic elements Spielberg used In this scene was his choice of music and how he used it to set up the scene. For example, when Hooper started to approach the boat.

The music got more intense and right when a human head pops out from the hole in the boat the music stops and it makes it very climatic because you were expecting the shark to come and attack him but instead a scary head pops out from the hole in the boat. Spielberg makes you think that the shark is going to attack Hooper because Hooper finds a huge shark tooth in the side of the boat. So when the music stops and the head pops out it is very surprising and scary. Another gothic element is the camera angle during this scene.

The camera Is positioned directly behind Hooper, as he Is scuba diving around the wreckage of the ship. This gives you the feeling of being right there with Hooper and makes you feel claustrophobic because there Is nowhere else to look the right over his shoulder. This sakes the scene so much more scary and intense. Other horror elements are the lighting, props, and makeup. Spielberg made the lighting very dim and spooky. He did this on purpose because the scene was supposed to be a creepy scene.

It made it harder to make out what was going on. The prop head that was used during this scene had a very creepy makeup done on it. The head was made to look like it was under there for a little bit and it was Just starting to decompose, which made it scary. Spielberg knew exactly what he was doing with this film. His use of gothic elements made it the extremely popular thriller It was. Without these elements the vie has no chill factor and would not be as successful as It was and still Is today.

Jaws and Gothic Elements By Emily Gothic Elements in Jaws One of the gothic elements Spielberg used in this scene was his choice of music and Another gothic element is the camera angle during this scene. The camera is positioned directly behind Hooper, as he is scuba diving around the wreckage of the claustrophobic because there is nowhere else to look the right over his shoulder. This elements made it the extremely popular thriller it was. Without these elements the movie has no chill factor and would not be as successful as it was and still is today.