Academic literature on the topic 'Gothic poetry'

Abstract Labeled by Louis Peck a “bibliographical hazard,” Tales ofTerror has long suffered from two misrepresentations: 1) it has been frequently attributed to M.G. Lewis, although no external evidence exists to support the claim; and, somewhat paradoxically, 2) it has been dismissed as a mere burlesque of Lewis’s Tales of Wonder, despite the fact that the majority of its poems treat Gothic themes in a serious manner. The parodic spirit pervading Tales of Wonder stems in part from Lewis’s attempt toanticipate and defuse critical alarm about his Gothic works. The writers of Tales of Terrorcarry on this double-edged treatment of the Gothic, especially in the volume’s“Introductory Dialogue” between a defender and opponent of Gothic poetry. Thedestabilizing presence of a satiric voice in ballads specifically selected for their recoveryof a more forceful, authentic, and native idiom of poetry also raises an interestingsecondary question: whether Gothic ballads can be free of the ironic consciousness theywere originally and ostensibly designed to exclude.

Abstract This article is part of a body of research into the conventions which govern the composition of Gothic texts. Gothic fiction resorts to formulas or formula-like constructions, but whereas in writers such as Ann Radcliffe this practice is apt to be masked by stylistic devices, it enjoys a more naked display in the–in our modern eyes–less ‘canonical’ Gothics, and it is in these that we may profitably begin an analysis. The novel selected was Peter Teuthold’s The Necromancer (1794)–a very free translation of K. F. Kahlert’s Der Geisterbanner (1792) and one of the seven Gothic novels mentioned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. There is currently no literature on the topic of formulaic language in Gothic prose fiction. The article resorts to a modified understanding of the term ‘collocation’ as used in lexicography and corpus linguistics to identify the significant co-occurrence of two or more words in proximity. It also draws on insights from the Theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition, in particular as concerns the use of the term ‘formula’ in traditional epic poetry, though again some modifications are required by the nature of Teuthold’s text. The article differentiates between formula as a set of words which appear in invariant or near-invariant collocation more than once, and a formulaic pattern, a rather more complex, open system of collocations involving lexical and other fields. The article isolates a formulaic pattern—that gravitating around the node-word ‘horror’, a key word for the entire Gothic genre –, defines its component elements and structure within the book, and analyses its thematic importance. Key to this analysis are the concepts of overpatterning, ritualization, equivalence and visibility.

The Gothic short form in Latin America has yet to receive focused scholarly attention. Yet, despite no early Gothic novel tradition to speak of, the Gothic mode emerged in poetry and short fiction, representing particular anxieties and colonial/postcolonial realities specific to the region owing in part to a significant increase in periodicals. Focusing on two case studies – Clemente Palma's ‘La granja blanca’ (Peru, 1904) and Horacio Quiroga's ‘El almohadón de plumas’ (Uruguay, 1917) – this article will explore how Latin American authors classified as modern, modernista, and criollista were experimenting with Gothic forms, adapting the design of the traditional Gothic novel to intensify its effect and reach a wider readership. Demonstrating a particular influence of Poe, a unity of effect is created, one that suggests that the home is a place of horrors, not comfort, and the uniquely horrifying settings and plot ultimately challenge established moral codes and literary tendencies.

The article examines a peculiar feature of the poetry by Evhen Malaniuk — the poetics of reiteration (in various versions) of certain images and tropes. Particular attention is paid to the semantic nests: metal (primarily iron), fire, blood, wind, storm, haze, distance (especially boundlessness, abyss and their time equivalent — eternity). The intertextual, geographical, historical-biographical and autopsychological genesis of modified semantic signs has been considered. The image variability is characteristic for E. Malaniuk (as for A. Pushkin and T. Shevchenko); to a great extent Malaniuk is a variational poet. In addition to external intertextuality, his poetry is characterized by internal intertextuality: autoreminiscences, imagery modifications, variants of repetitive images and tropes. Malaniuk’s interest in Gothic architecture generated in his poetry numerous tropes (epithets and metaphors), based on the semantics of Gothicism. At the same time, the determinant feature of Gothic structures – elongation above – was widely transferred to the plant world and anatomy of man, similarly it was projected onto celestial sphere (visible from the earth), or served as the basis for building abstract spiritual, philosophical, historical and culturological images. Gothicism can be defined as the dominant of Malaniuk’s spirit and poetic thinking – the direction to heavenly heights on the level of the spiritual impulse, and the semantics of imagery. Malaniuk was fascinated by the Catholic Gothic architecture, directed toward the sky and expressing the human impulse to God. He regretted that this strict style was not extending to Ukraine; there Baroque with its rounded, low forms was prevailing. There is a high probability that the most common in Malaniuk’s poetry semantic nests were to a certain extent reminiscent of the poetry of T. Shevchenko, P. Kulish, P. Tychyna, M. Rylskyi, M. Zerov, representatives of the «Prague School» Yu. Darahan, O. Stefanovych, Yu. Lypa, as well as other poets (A. Blok, Ju. Tuwim).

I think I am one born out of due time, who has no calling here.* * *If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.— Hardy, “In Tenebris II,” Poems of the Past and the PresentCRITICS HAVE TOO OFTEN dismissed the Gothic elements in Thomas Hardy’s writings as superficial trappings to be found mostly in his minor fiction.1 The aim of this article is to show that the diffusion of Gothic motifs in the whole of Hardy’s literary production is something both intentional and fruitful. The Gothic is indeed a vital part of Hardy’s artistic vision, and it adds to the aesthetic value of his works. His major novels and his poetry are as rife with Gothic lore as his early “minor” fiction.2 This propagation of Gothic elements is central to the dialectic between impregnation and dispersal contained in the etymology of the word “dissemination” (meaning both “sowing” and “scattering”).3


 David Punter is the author of fifteen academic books, many of which revolve around gothic fiction. The Literature of Terror: The Gothic Tradition(vol. 1-2, 1996) is one of the most relevant manuals about the Gothic published so far. He is also the editor of ten academic volumes, and has taught at universities in different countries and even continents, the University of Bristol being the last one, where he was the research director for the Faculty of Arts. David Punter has also authored eight volumes of poetry and has published poems and short stories in various anthologies. He is also a writer and a poet, and his work can be found at david-punter.org.

The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, also known as the period of Romanticism, were marked with the interest of the authors in nature and emotions, but also in the supernatural, horrible and the exotic. Although it was the era of reason and the progress of sciences, critics have identified the significance of the Gothic influence on the works of most of the English Romantic figures, among which Lord Byron is known to have had the major influence on the creation and persistence of the vampire figure, as a Gothic trope, haunting the last and this century’s literature and film. This paper attempts to unravel the origins and nature of the mysterious cultural appeal to the literary vampire by tracing its origins from Eastern European folklore, the first poem titled “Der Vampir”(1743) by Heinrich Ossenfelder, to the German Sturm and Drang poets, such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Gottfried August Buerger and their respective poems “Die Braut von Korinth” (1789) and “Lenore” (1773). The role of British ballad writers Southey, Lewis and Scott and their ballad collections will be considered as a significant effort to “renew the spirit” of British poetry which according to Scott had reached “a remarkably low ebb in Britain” (as cited in Thomson, 2002, p.80). Another literary figure engaged in writing Gothic ballads following the tradition of Mathew Lewis, not so well-known during her time, was the Scottish writer Anne Bannerman. Her ballad “Dark Ladie” deserves special attention in this context, as it features a female character who is transformed from the previous ballad tradition: from a passive victim of male seduction, here she becomes a fatal woman who comes back from the undead to seek for revenge and initiates the line of female vampires such as Keats’s “Lamia” and Coleridge’s “Christabel”. Thus, this paper elaborates on the major contributors to the Gothic stream in poetry in the specific period, mainly ballads, and traces the presence and development of Gothic elements and vampiric features. The continuous appeal to the Gothic found its place in the works of several major English Romantics, even though they put great effort to differentiate their poetry from the popular literature of the day – Gothic novels. This paper will concentrate on Lord Byron’s Oriental tale The Giaour (1813) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). Both works incorporate Gothic themes, settings and characters, but there hasn’t been much literary focus with reference to the vampire theme they are based on. Although, critics have observed the contribution of the ambivalent vampire figure in Romantic literature, critical evaluation of the growth of this Gothic character in these two poems until now is incomplete. Hence, we will focus on Byron and Coleridge’s appropriation of the vampire figure and their contribution to the growth of this character. The various metaphoric usages of this character will also be explored and defined to determine their purpose.

The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, also known as the period of Romanticism, were marked with the interest of the authors in nature and emotions, but also in the supernatural, horrible and the exotic. Although it was the era of reason and the progress of sciences, critics have identified the significance of the Gothic influence on the works of most of the English Romantic figures, among which Lord Byron is known to have had the major influence on the creation and persistence of the vampire figure, as a Gothic trope, haunting the last and this century’s literature and film. This paper attempts to unravel the origins and nature of the mysterious cultural appeal to the literary vampire by tracing its origins from Eastern European folklore, the first poem titled “Der Vampir”(1743) by Heinrich Ossenfelder, to the German Sturm and Drang poets, such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Gottfried August Buerger and their respective poems “Die Braut von Korinth” (1789) and “Lenore” (1773). The role of British ballad writers Southey, Lewis and Scott and their ballad collections will be considered as a significant effort to “renew the spirit” of British poetry which according to Scott had reached “a remarkably low ebb in Britain” (as cited in Thomson, 2002, p.80). Another literary figure engaged in writing Gothic ballads following the tradition of Mathew Lewis, not so well-known during her time, was the Scottish writer Anne Bannerman. Her ballad “Dark Ladie” deserves special attention in this context, as it features a female character who is transformed from the previous ballad tradition: from a passive victim of male seduction, here she becomes a fatal woman who comes back from the undead to seek for revenge and initiates the line of female vampires such as Keats’s “Lamia” and Coleridge’s “Christabel”. Thus, this paper elaborates on the major contributors to the Gothic stream in poetry in the specific period, mainly ballads, and traces the presence and development of Gothic elements and vampiric features. The continuous appeal to the Gothic found its place in the works of several major English Romantics, even though they put great effort to differentiate their poetry from the popular literature of the day – Gothic novels. This paper will concentrate on Lord Byron’s Oriental tale The Giaour (1813) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). Both works incorporate Gothic themes, settings and characters, but there hasn’t been much literary focus with reference to the vampire theme they are based on. Although, critics have observed the contribution of the ambivalent vampire figure in Romantic literature, critical evaluation of the growth of this Gothic character in these two poems until now is incomplete. Hence, we will focus on Byron and Coleridge’s appropriation of the vampire figure and their contribution to the growth of this character. The various metaphoric usages of this character will also be explored and defined to determine their purpose.

Polska ballada gotycka [The Polish Gothic Ballad] by Paweł Pluta, is one of a few, and one of the first complete case studies in Polish humanities whose reminiscence has had a huge impact on the shape of modern culture (not only popular culture).Pluta focuses on works created between 1771–1830. The author argues that the gothic ballad has its roots in literary communication, when the translations of Phillippe Habert’s Le Temple de la Mort (1633) (pp. 36–37) by Adam Stanisław Naruszewicz and Mateusz Czarnek were published. Pluta treats these first translations as the “beginning of literary Gothicism in Poland” (p. 37). In the institutional and ideological context, it is a significant statement, as Habert was a part of the Académie des Illustres Bergers group which gathered writers fascinated by pastoral poetry. Thus, such a choice of inspirations of the Polish “gothic poets” makes it possible for Pluta to combine the two types of gothic ballad, one related to horror and the other to history. On the other hand, in the context of importance of 1830, the author alleges the opinion of Zyg-munt Krasiński from 1831 (p. 194); it seems all the more important, as in his youth the writer created gothic horror stories (for instance his debut Grób rodziny Reichstalów [The Tomb of the Reichstal Family] 1828, Mściwy karzeł i Masław książę mazowiecki [The Vindictive Midget and Masław the Mazovian Prince] 1830). It is important to remember that the gothic imaginarium (especially its hor-ror kind) permeated to lyric poetry and other genres (e.g. verse novel) and still left room for creative potential. Thus, the year 1830 marks not the end of some of tendencies, but rather their turning point. It is worth mentioning Pluta’s monograph published by The Institute of Literary Research; its bibliography is not listed in alphabetical order but in a chronological one and the dates of the first edi-tions of each source are included. This indicates not only the scientific meticulousness of the publisher, but also the awareness that in the times of the internet and easy access to library and archival resources, the reader may wish to study not only the modern editions of a given text, but also the original.