Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations and Captions for Volume I
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Gothic in/and History
- 1.1 The Goths in Ancient History
- 1.2 The Term ‘Gothic’ in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680‒1800
- 1.3 The Literary Gothic Before Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
- 1.4 Gothic Revival Architecture Before Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill
- 1.5 Horace Walpole and the Gothic
- 1.6 Shakespeare’s Gothic Transmigrations
- 1.7 Reassessing the Gothic/Classical Relationship
- 1.8 ‘A World of Bad Spirits’: The Terrors of Eighteenth-Century Empire
- 1.9 In Their Blood: The Eighteenth-Century Gothic Stage
- 1.10 Domestic Gothic Writing after Horace Walpole and before Ann Radcliffe
- 1.11 Early British Gothic and the American Revolution
- 1.12 Gothic and the French Revolution, 1789–1804
- 1.13 The Aesthetics of Terror and Horror: A Genealogy
- 1.14 Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis
- 1.15 The Gothic Novel Beyond Radcliffe and Lewis
- 1.16 Oriental Gothic: Imperial-Commercial Nightmares from the Eighteenth Century to the Romantic Period
- 1.17 The German ‘School’ of Horrors: A Pharmacology of the Gothic
- 1.18 Gothic and the History of Sexuality
- 1.19 Gothic Art and Gothic Culture in the Romantic Era
- 1.20 Time in the Gothic
- Select Bibliography
- Index
1.3 - The Literary Gothic Before Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2020
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations and Captions for Volume I
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Gothic in/and History
- 1.1 The Goths in Ancient History
- 1.2 The Term ‘Gothic’ in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680‒1800
- 1.3 The Literary Gothic Before Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
- 1.4 Gothic Revival Architecture Before Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill
- 1.5 Horace Walpole and the Gothic
- 1.6 Shakespeare’s Gothic Transmigrations
- 1.7 Reassessing the Gothic/Classical Relationship
- 1.8 ‘A World of Bad Spirits’: The Terrors of Eighteenth-Century Empire
- 1.9 In Their Blood: The Eighteenth-Century Gothic Stage
- 1.10 Domestic Gothic Writing after Horace Walpole and before Ann Radcliffe
- 1.11 Early British Gothic and the American Revolution
- 1.12 Gothic and the French Revolution, 1789–1804
- 1.13 The Aesthetics of Terror and Horror: A Genealogy
- 1.14 Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis
- 1.15 The Gothic Novel Beyond Radcliffe and Lewis
- 1.16 Oriental Gothic: Imperial-Commercial Nightmares from the Eighteenth Century to the Romantic Period
- 1.17 The German ‘School’ of Horrors: A Pharmacology of the Gothic
- 1.18 Gothic and the History of Sexuality
- 1.19 Gothic Art and Gothic Culture in the Romantic Era
- 1.20 Time in the Gothic
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter investigates the grounds upon which we might address the question of Gothic literature before the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in late 1764. In line with much criticism, it begins by identifying traces of the Gothic in a selection of earlier texts, including Shakespearean drama and the Graveyard poetry of the 1740s. Proposing that this question is best thought of in historical terms, however, it considers how late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century critics themselves conceptualised the nation’s ‘Gothick’ literary inheritance, surveying, as it does so, such Whig writers as William Temple, John Dennis, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Joseph Addison and Mark Akenside, as well as works by the Tory John Dryden. Having situated Walpole’s fiction alongside contemporary works by Richard Hurd, Thomas Percy and Samuel Johnson, it argues that a self-conscious spirit of ‘Revival’ is crucial to what would later become known as ‘Gothic fiction’. By way of conclusion, the chapter turns to the case of Thomas Leland’s Longsword, Earl of Salisbury (1762), assessing the extent to which it might be described as an example of pre-Walpolean Gothic.
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- The Cambridge History of the GothicVolume 1: Gothic in the Long Eighteenth Century, pp. 67 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020