zaew2oi7 ‘The Sublime's Effects in Gothic Fiction | The Alice The Sublime’s Effects in Gothic Fiction John Martin's “The Great Day of His Wrath" provokes an eye} ing, cpocalyptic view of the sublime. With ghosts, spacious castles, and fainting heroes, Gothic fiction conveys both thrill and intrigue. Gothic literature is a combination of horror fiction and Romantic thought; Romantic thought encompasses awe toward nature. Essentially, Romanticism is a reaction against the Enlightenment, a time that revolutionized scientific thought, and emphasizes emotional response and intuition over clinical knowledge. Romantic literature elicits personal pleasure from natural beauty, and Gothic fiction takes this aesthetic reaction and subverts it by creating delight and confusion from terror. This use of terror is called the sublime, which is an important tool in these narratives. Examples of Gothic literature range from dark romances to supernatural mysteries. In Gothic novels, no matter the setting or villain, the sublime exists as a different experience than appreciating natural beauty. In fact, this concept deals with how authors capture their characters’ trauma and fear. It is important to look at the sublime in the lens of both the characters’ experiences and the real world contexts that influence them. Beyond identifying the sublime, a crucial part of looking at this technique is seeing how the fears present in Gothic literature factor into real life concerns, Inips:ftne-artifescomthe-subimes-afcts-in-gohic- ition! 120nao17 ‘The Sublime's Ets in Gate Fiton| Toe Afew such as the enforced roles and restrictions faced by women. The use of terror illuminates how the marginalized, once given a voice, cope with their harrowing predicaments, and reading about these struggles helps foster comprehension and empathy. Defining the Sublime What separates experiencing the sublime from experiencing beauty is the disruption of harmony. As stated above, it shows elements of Romantic reactions to human experience while utilizing fear as well. According to Edmund Burke, the imagination experiences both thrill and fear through what is “dark, uncertain, and confused.” ! In setting the sublime apart from beauty, the sublime creates more than a positive, appreciative response to an aesthetic, such as a beautiful painting or sunlit meadow. The sublime stems from potent awe and terror that stresses someone’s limits, surpassing all other responses and overloading the recipient in both their revulsion and fascination. In regards to the Romantic view of the environment, the sublime can occur when natural grandeur overwhelms an individual to the point of causing fright or a feeling of helpless insignificance. Overall, approaching the sublime occurs when a sight or experience is “awesome” or ” awful” in the old meaning of both words: characterized by or inspiring awe, and awe is an emotion containing fear, wonder, and reverence. The sublime questions the stark dichotomy between pleasure and pain because a fear-invoking scene can also cause wonder, an odd sort of delight. In a contemporary sense, it could be viewed as watching a train wreck: horrifying, but captivating to the viewer. hips:the-artfice,comthe-subimes-efects-n-gshio- icon! 200‘The Sublime's Effects in Gothic Fiction | The Aries Joseph Mallord William Turner's “Fishermen at Sea” combines the gloom of a dark night with eerie, captivating moonlight. Because of its potency and Burke’s gendered views, he viewed the Romantic or Gothic sublime as a more masculine and powerful experience than beauty, which he perceived as feminine, and therefore more fragile and superficial. However, Mary Wollstonecraft, an English writer and avid women’s rights advocate, argued against this perspective and its depiction of women as inherently weak and passive. For Wollstonecraft, the sublime dealt with the self and its subjective views of society and spectacular natural scenery. Interestingly enough, Ann Radcliffe, the English writer who pioneered the Gothic novel (as well as the “Female Gothic” novel, Gothic literature for ‘women, by women), maintained that horror and terror exist as separate entities, and that terror, not horror, creates the sublime because, while horror is definite, terror provokes ambiguous emotions, which in turn “expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life.” * Horror involves witnessing the monster, of seeing blood or a corpse, while terror burrows into an individual's unclear psyche and entails multiple, conflicting emotions stirring at once. Gender and Evoking the Sublime Going off of Mary Wollstonecraft’s view of the sublime as a part of her relationship to society (and haw 19th century Western culture treated Inips:ftne-artifescomthe-subimes-afcts-in-gohic- ition! a0nao17 ‘The Sublime's Ets in Gate Fiton| Toe Afew ‘women’s intelligence and education), the sublime, through overwrought sensory details, can reveal what scares the character based on real struggles. For women in Victorian England (1837- 1901), the sublime is triggered through a fear of confinement and suppression based on societal expectations; an example of this fear appears in Charlotte Mary Wollstonecraft was a y 3. prominent writer and Bronte’s Jane Eyre *. prcponent for women’s rights. In the beginning, Jane experiences terror when her aunt locks her inside the red-room, the former chambers of her dead uncle. As her imprisonment lingers, the experience takes its toll on Jane, and she soon believes her uncle’s ghost, a patriarchal symbol, will rise and attack her. She states, “My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I ‘was oppressed, suffocated; endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort” (11). Jane Eyre becomes enraptured in an experience that affects her on both a physical and emotional level, an experience that strains her, that challenges her and extends past the capacity of her imagination. The sublime creates hysteria, and the concept of “hysteria” derives from the archaic belief that cis ‘women act in excess or have uncontrollable, irrational bouts of emotions when their uterus does nat function properly. Considering the Victorian ‘woman’s experience, as well as earlier ones (though published in the Victorian era, Bronte set the novel in the Georgian era) the red-room may be red for a variety of symbolic reasons: menstruation (Jane is ten at the novel’s beginning and will soon enter puberty); passion; torment; blood. Furthermore, Jane’s imprisonment in the red-room stems from punishment for confronting her male cousin after he hits her and insults her because she is dependent on his family and because the books she reads are not her own. She suffers for rebelling, for educating herself and living in an environment where she does not possess her awn independence, so the surreality of her hips:the-artfice,comthe-subimes-efects-n-gshio- icon!nao17 ‘The Sublime's Ets in Gate Fiton| Toe Afew break with reality emphasizes the terror of her experience as a girl approaching womanhood. In Jane Eyre, this issue also manifests in the character of Bertha Mason, the wife of Jane’s love interest, who spends several years locked in an attic because of her mental instability. Because of society’s treatment of mental illness, especially in regards to Bertha’s gender and racial identity, Bertha becomes as trapped as Jane was at the start of the novel, and her ordeal culminates in a result that is both terrifying to witness but dazzling and gripping in its own terrible way: fire. Frankenstein: Awe-Inspiring Feats and Standards of Beauty 5 The Sublime in Gothic fiction Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein “ deals with many complex themes while invoking the sublime. She considered the navel her own monster, with herself as the creator. While many of her male contemporaries mainly worked with poetry and operated in exclusive chats, Mary Shelley wrote a complex novel at a young age. The narrative deals with the impact of nature. In fact, Frankenstein challenges the aspect of nature itself as the titular character, Victor Frankenstein, researches bath modern science and alchemy to defeat death. In terms of the environment, the Monster comes to life due to a violent storm. Before that, Victor speaks of feeling jubilation from a startling and intriguing natural event. hips:the-artfice,comthe-subimes-efects-n-gshio- icon! 520nao17 ‘The Sublime's Ets in Gate Fiton| Toe Afew When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed. This scene nat only shows the sublime, but foreshadows Victor’s ruination. Victor’s own accomplishment is an awe-inspiring feat; it is an action that incites inspiration and terror as the Monster becomes a strikingly intelligent living being, but suffers marginalization because he is the embodiment of the sublime and not beauty. The Monster is painful to look at, and therefore mistreated and accosted. Victor becomes the modern Prometheus, the Titan who brought fire to humanity ata terrible cost. By mirroring the Titan’s fate, Victor performs a grand feat, fueled by knowledge and breaking boundaries, and suffers not only for his transgression, but for neglecting his grotesque creation, his child, for a superficial reason. Theodore von Holst, the tants, $ fronthpiece to Pantenstein, ‘Though he initially seeks for his 1831: Victor flees interror at creation to be beautiful, the actual result renimessing ihe mensie he elicits terror. Victor states, “No mortal could support the horror of that countenance.” When the living creature maves, it then “became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceive.” The situation, as miraculous and groundbreaking as it is, becomes Victor’s own personal hell. As his life hiips:the-arttfice,comthe-sublimes-efects-n-gshio- icon! 620nao17 ‘The Sublime's Ets in Gate Fiton| Toe Afew unravels, the reader becomes the recipient of a sublime experience: as horrific as the downfall is to witness, the narrative propels the reader forward to the bleak and devastating conclusion. One could also determine that this Gothic tragedy also displays elements of dissecting the fears of Victorian cis women, though the Monster's creation and how people treat him have also become representations of brilliant but morally-questioned modern innovations (genetically modified food; cloning animals) and contemporary marginalization (issues of race, sexuality, transgender identity, disability, etc.). Concerning the fears of Victorian cis women, Mary Shelley’s mother, the aforementioned Mary Wollstonecraft, died from a post-birth infection, and Shelley herself suffered from miscarriages and the deaths of infant children and dreamed of one of her babies returning to life. It is entirely possible that Frankenstein contains Shelley’s thoughts on both the wonder and trauma of childbirth, since Mary’s own birth caused her mother’s infection and death. In the preface for Frankenstein, Mary Shelley writes, “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.” The Monster and his creation are not only representations of the sublime, but the novel itself, for it exists as both an entity of woe and happiness concerning the author’s past, present, and future misfortunes. As an important part of Gothic works, the sublime helps readers uncover aspects of humanity. The commingling delight and terror deal with personal emotions and experiences for both the characters and the works’ authors, as well as the audience. It is essential to not only be able to define and find the sublime in Gothic literature, but to also determine the causes of fear in hopes that the reader can empathize with the complex, overwhelming struggles presented in various works. Though this is a 19th century concept, the pivotal hips:the-artfice,comthe-subimes-efects-n-gshio- icon! 720nao17 ‘The Sublime's Ets in Gate Fiton| Toe Afew issues presented in Gothic works such as Jane Eyre and Frankenstein reverberate in modern culture. Works Cited Burke, Edmund, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Part I, Section VII. @ Bruhm, Steven. Gothic Bodies: The Politics of Pain in Romantic Fiction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Harper Collins, 2010. Print. © Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Project Gutenberg, 2 Mar. 2005. Web. 5 Dec. 2015. © What do you think? Leave a comment. Share on Facebook ) (Share on Twitter Emily Deibler Avid writer, reader, and geek. Huge horror fan. Pagan reverend. Easily appeased by books and chocolate. ishaupral Christen, Mandracctia, Emilie Medlanc+ Marchen, Joseph Manduke IV, Misagh, Catherine Conte, Jordan emilyinmannyc, Jeffery Moser. Want to write about Literature or other art forms? hips:the-artfice,comthe-subimes-efects-n-gshio- icon!zaew2oi7 ‘The Sublime's Effects in Gothic Fiction | The Alice Create writer account Receive our weekly newsletter: Enter your email Subscribe Terror and Horror in Shakespeare's Richard Poe's “The Cask of Ill: The Power of Amontillado” Speech net Influence of the |-Novel The Sublime’s Effects in (féIsatl) on Makoto Gothic Fiction Shinkai's Films 49 COMMENTS REPLY Tooom 1 Jane was ahead of her time. REPLY Emily Deibler Thanks for the comment! When looking at Jane Eyre from the perspective of both gender and race (the treatment of Bertha Mason), things definitely get complicated. Still, the nuanced treatment of gender merits much hips:the-artfice,comthe-subimes-efects-n-gshio- icon!zaez017 ® “Tho Sublime's Elects in Got Fiction| The Aries ‘thought, especially in regards to the societal confinement Jane faces-beth as a woman fighting for agency and as someone not conventionally beautiful when the common. ‘thought then was beauty=good (a theme explored in other works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray). DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Chara Gantt 1 The sublime is so awe-inspiring. D 2015 REPLY Emily Deibler Thanks for the response! DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Evelie 1 Interesting! Gothic authors are often really into concepts like the sublime. 2015 REPLY Emily Deibler Thank you for the comment. The sublime is a wonderful tool for composing Gothic works. DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Allred 1 Hove the supematural, surreal and sublime elements in gothic literature. DEC 29, 2 Emily Deibler ‘Thanks for the response. I agree. In fact, the ambiguity and surreal elements are likely why Gothic works are my favorite horror subgenre-alonaside Weird fiction. DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Jekojeko 2 My favourite reading of Frankenstein is that, through Victor's mentions of ‘penetrating’ nature, the novel implies that the monster is the victim and vengeful result of Nature being raped by science. Such a fun read. Emily Deibler hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 1020zaez017 “he Subimes Elects in Gabe Flton| The Aton DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Frankenstein is one of my favorite novels, 2 if not rry favorite, because of the several different readings that can be taken from it. Maty Shelley infused so much complexity and nuance into a single work. Becauise of the thematic significance of the petils of taking science too far and childbirth Biblical creation, | think there's something to the reading you've stated. tt reminds me of a song by one of my favorite bands that essentially compares mankind conquering a feminized nature to rape-and the consequences of that sustained violation. It helps that the earth and its fertility normally take on a female personification, especially in pagan religions (tshtar; Demeter) where cisgender women are associated with conception. ve seen the same language in Tagore’s The Home and the World, and likely many other works-where the defilement and “conquest” of Mother Nature becomes a rape allusion. tt fits with the Gothic issue of gender and attempting to “tame” an individual or relegate women to recipients, as well as the terror and confusion that ensue from the trauma, from the struggle to assert power against debilitating odds. tt reminds me of haw the Myth of Persephone changed, and now the myths of her as the sole queen cf the dead are much less known than the story of her being kidnapped and tricked to be Hades’ wife. ‘Thanks for the comment! 2015 REPLY Hannah 1 Excellent analysis. DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Emily Deibler Thank you! DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Kevin Mohammed 1 Excellent work! This is a really interesting piece and | find Frankenstein to be one of my hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 1120zaez017 A “The Subime's Elects in Gobi Fetion| The Atiice favorite dassics, | have been thinking about ‘trying a gathic fiction work or something and this article has definitely helped inspire me to do so! DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Emily Deibler 1 Thank you! As someone currently working on a Souther Gothic retelling of The Fall cf the House of Usher and ancther Gothic story, I fully encourage writing in this genre. I'm extremely glad to hear this artide could act as inspiration. Best of luck on whatever you come up with! DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Kevin Mohammed 1 Thank you! And much luck to you as well iin your writing projects! | look forward to reading them! 0.0 DEC 29, 2015 REPLY JDJankowski 1 I ind it interesting that a definition that you give for sublime came from a figure of the Enlightenment. The only point of concem that | have is that you may have read too much into current conceptions of gender to make your argument. DEC 29, 2015 REPLY Emily Deibler ris interesting, especially in terms of how the topics cf science and nature play on one another and the relationship between the Enlightenment and Romanticism-with one being a reaction to the other. Also, | hear you on the retrospective (or rear- view) lens of gender appearing here-seeing past works through contemporary standards. The great thing about literature, especially Frankenstein, is haw mary different readings can ocaur for one piece, as well as seeing haw certain issues presented in a text may or may not persist. I guess it’s the same way works like ‘The Merchant of Venice change in perception when a character like Shylock is viewed in a contemporary time versus how he would have been regarded then. For some, it calls into hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond Rozaez017 “The Sublime's Elects in Gate Fen | The Atifce question the timelessness of certain works, while it can also make the discussion more relevant. Going away from gender, Frankenstein invokes this a lot where it’s used as shorthand for issues like animal cloning and genetic modification. | also recall a book that mentioned Frankenstein to simultaneously iscuss feminism and vegetarianism the ani rights movement. In fact, Frankenstein is ‘everywhere to the point that it’s difficult to ignore. Anyway, I started rambling, as 'm wont to do with Mary Shelley. Thanks for the comment! DEC 30, 2015 REPLY Cindrella ‘Anyone who thinks Jane Eyre the character is some litle submissive, repressed wealding compated to her far more “progressive” sophisticated ‘liberated! successors found in ‘the most dreadful of all genres “chick lit" doesn't know crap. I'ma very proud feminist from the 70s/80s generation and I thoroughly despise, loathe and detest chick lit. Give me Jane Eyre any day — a novel that ‘examines a young woman with no status and with absolutely no one in the world to help and protect her, who survives a horrific school yet manages to get a decent education out of it, bravely goes out into the world totally on her ‘cwn with no protection or patronage with zero connections, uses her education to make a living, takes an unleved child into her heart and ‘transforms a man lost in his own self pity. A woman who demands to be treated as an equal ina time when such things were subversive. Jane Eyre the woman is a far more courageous, intelligent, thoughtful character than any of the idiots populating the incredibly mindnumbing saribblings found in “chick lit.” DEC 30, 2015 REPLY MsTrejo hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 1320zaez017 “The Sublime’ Elects in Gate Fete The Aton Gothic horror may be old but it’s so popular it’s being re-invented all the time, because it speaks to the human story and the human heart. DEC 30, 2015 REPLY upchurch Lerjoyed this article. Gothic fiction tells us the truth about our divided nature. DEC 30, 2015 REPLY Caro Jactually thought it was a very interesting article! DEC 30, 2015 REPLY dalila Great analysis on how gothic novel deals with the sublime and the supernatural. DEC 30, 2015 REPLY Chase Frankenstein is a fantastically conflicted character. In many ways the Creature is an ‘extermalisation of Victor Frankenstein's own frustration at the suffocating effect of his domestic relations. His duties to his family and friends hold him back and prevent him from acheiving his dreams. The Creature acts like a destructive avatar, and sets about murdering Victor's family and friends. Yet Victor's motivation in creating the Creature are his yearnings to be invincible - he wishes to create a race of creatures immune to death and nature. For the Creature’s part, it desires to receive the domestic affection that Victor flees from, and which Victor denies it. Realising it cannot have this itself, it determines to destroy Victor's loved ones in revenge. DEC 30, 2015 REPLY MichelleAjodah Treally enjcyed your explanation of the sublime. You wrote a lot about gender, and that highlighted for me the paralldls between Cothic/Romatic and Masculinity /Ferni hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 1420zaez017 “Tho Sublime's Elects in Got Fiction| The Aries DEC 30, 2015 REPLY Travis McKinney | ‘What a wonderfull job you've done defining and in the texts you gloss capturing the sublime and its importance. I have always felt that the sublime is just such an experience —whether encountered through literature or life experience elsewhere—that shakes us to ‘our core, tertifies Us, and, like the steep diff dewn which we now look, understanding our selves as mere trifles of the universe, which at any moment may blow us to dust and leave us forgotten, also allows us, because of our new awareness of our smallness, to be more alive ‘than we have ever been, if momentarily. I feel ‘that you have captured that very well, particularly in Frankenstein, DEC 31, 2015 REPLY Stove Jane eyte for me exploded the myth of patriarchal strength with revelations of the hypocrisy of the dominant species - the lying, greed, deceit and weakness. DEC 31, 2015 REPLY Abigail Talways thought that horror and gathic were different things in fiction. Horror written specifically to thrill while gothic literature less immediately thrills but gives one a deep sense of fear, a sort of unsettling feeling that at the root of all things there is a darkness, So gothic would certaintly be Wuthering Heights for example, where as outright sd-fi ‘type thriller type of novel, say IT by Stephen. King would be straight horror. Dracula as another example would sort of bridge the two genres. ing JAN 2, 2016 REPLY Cody Exactly — horror and the gothic might cverfap in places in treatment, but they are not identical. ‘There's also what was known in its time of ‘tremendous popularity, with stories with that attitude and approach printed even in daily newspapers, sensational literature, or hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 1520zaez017 “The Sublime’ Elects in Gate Fete The Aton Yellowbacks, when released on pulp paper and yellow paper cover. This too would often bridge gothic and horror. DEC 31, 20 Hien Lately I've been getting into literature that’s gothic and romantic. 5 REPLY DEC 31, 2015 REPLY chan oth lit is good on maintaining dark and mysterious appeal. JAN 1, 2016 REPLY Yong In case anyone has the idea that Frankenstein is great work of literature, forget it, The concept was brilliant, the marketing unerting, The execution was badly written scurrilous trash. JAN |, 2016 REPLY queen The Gothic sublime landscape leads to a sickening sense of dedine and decay. JAN 1, 20 Greenlee “A perfect example of the grotesquely sublime is her heavenly vision while standing in the hog-pen." Lauren Gibson 6 REPLY JAN 1, 2016 REPLY dtrott I think the connection to fear vs. hortor is right on point, Today we throw the word “sublime” around without realizing that it’s criginal meaning speaks to something so much deeper and more profound then simple interest. JAN 1, 2016 REPLY Camille Brouard ‘This brings me back to studying the Gothic as part of my BA degree, I loved The hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 1620zaez017 A “The Sublime's fects in Gath Fiction | The Arce Monk! Fascinating attitudes to Catholicism in novels of that time. JAN 2, 2016 REPLY Megan Finsel 1 This is such a wonderful, well-written, article! I thoroughly er joyed how you correlated the sublime to women’s rights, and your references to Female Gethic. All your points are every deep; it really made me reconsider Gothic lit in a new light. Your thoughts conceming Jane Eyre and Frankenstein were also intriguing, I'm going to have to read the books with new insight now. Again, wonderful work! JAN 2, 2016 REPLY luminousgloom Wonderfully written artide! | personally love gothic art, romanticism, and the enlightenment. Great meditation on the progression of a movement of artt JAN 2, 2016 REPLY Colvin The Sublime is an cverpcwering sense of the greatness and power of nature, JAN 4, 2016 REPLY Fawn Resolution of terror provides a means of escape, JAN 5, 2016 REPLY marinetti the difference between terror and horror - very stimulating JAN 20, 2016 REPLY kyni9 Dang, wish I'd seen this article when I was writing my midterm /final for my Gothic literature course... JAN 26, 2016 REPLY keecka It's really interesting to me that the ‘sublime is a key characteristic of science fiction as well - and that gothic fiction works as a hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 170zaez017 “The Subime's Elects in Gobi Fetion| The Atiice foreground for science fiction in many ways, notably through Mary Shelley. | tend to think of, Shelley as a primary science fiction novelist, precisely because Frankenstein is so concemed With the sublime and rationality and how those ‘two intertwine. That grasping for rationality amidst the terror of the sublime is a very gothic experience, though - something I believe has survived to today’s literature primarily through science fiction. (Although horror definitely has some aspects as well.) Very interesting article! JAN 6 REPLY Jaye Freeland *Sighs* I really en joyed this. Ieved reading about your examples, I leve the accompanying images you chose, and, | would love for you to write more on this subject. What are you favorite examples of Gothic literature? ‘Also, have you seen Crimson Peak? FEB 24, 2016 REPLY Rachel Elfassy Bitoun 1 A beautiful piece, very well documented! | like alll the links you make and the way you use visuals (images and informative video) to. ground your arguments. Make the reading very easy! MAY 10, 2016 REPLY LaRose | just did a paper on this myself when | ran into this artide online. Good job. MAY 23, 2016 REPLY kimletaon 1 For those who enjay reading Byron, and is fascinated by the idea of Byronic Heto, try Lermontov's “Hero of Our Times’, or Pushkin's “Eugene Onegin’. These works represent the golden age of Russian Romanticism. JUL 18, 2016 REPLY It's interesting to try and identify the sublime in contemporary gothic (or in hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 1820zagot7 “The Subime's Effects in Gothic Fiction| The Ais contemporary fiction that utilises gothic paraphernalia), especially with respect to representations of nature. In mary dystopian or €¢o-fiction today, it appears that nature is still terrifying, But what | find lacking is the sense of awe that the early gothic writers constructed in depictions of the natural world. | wonder if this is because of the way the media constructs the natural world as something dangerous and unpredictable and thus society sees the natural world as an “other’ that we must be wary of... A OCT 14, 2016 REPLY heliddick This is inspiring me to look deeper into Cothic literature as a genre. I have read Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and enjoyed each of them in tum. It seems that there is a strong connection between primal behaviors, madness and nature. Which is consistent with Foucault's history of mental illness and the changing social perception of “madness” over time. As the scientific method became more accepted, the mentally ill went from being innocent (and “touched by Godt’) to dangerous criminals. Once nature was viewed as an adversary to be conquered by science, the mentally ill were made into sinners who were akin to ‘the beast’; the natural representation of Satan. And they were forthwith punished accordingly. | see dramatic parallels in these stories between the unstable force of nature and the devious behaviors of the characters who are closest to the natural world ~ Heathdiff as a gypsy; Kathy as she felt drawn to the heathen Heathdiff and whase wandering of the moor spelled her demise, Bertha Mason and the insanity that was portrayed as being lustful and primal, and the monster (Frankenstein) who had poor impulse contral (a hallmark of mental illness), Great article! NOV 2, 2016 REPLY 8 Megan Finsel 1 “Thank you so much for putting this into words! I work in a library, and we're putting together a display with the theme of ‘the ‘sublime’ in literature. This artide has helped us better determine what exactly we need for the hips:the-rfice.comthe-subimes-sfets-r-gsthioicbond 1920zanzo7 ‘The Sublime's Ets in Gate Fiton| Toe Afew display, and how to define ‘the sublime’ in general. So | just wanted to say a quick thank you, and to note this was very well-written and thought through! Leave a Reply hips:the-artfice,comthe-subimes-efects-n-gshio- icon!