Free English Literature Dissertations - Nowadays Gothic Is Advanced And Changed, But It Remains One Of The Most
Nowadays gothic is advanced and changed, but it remains one of the most important genres of modern cinematography and literature. Such popularity can be explained by the fact that gothic novels make attempts to analyse in depth people’s consciousness that conflicts with the existing cultural stereotypes and superstition of the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries. On the basis of supernatural powers, gothic writers uncover some elements of human mentality; simultaneously the fear depicted in gothic novels reveal the negative impact of French and American Revolutions, as well as rationality of the era of Enlightenment on people’s consciousness.
In view of such cruel and complex social reality, there is no wonder that English literature has gradually turned from rationality to the unconscious, to the exploration of psychological states of characters and coexistence of good and evil in people. As a result, gothic novels appear to be the principal source for a psychoanalytic investigation, because, according to Freud’s psychoanalysis, the evil and horror are usually inspired by people, by their powerful emotions and illusions, but not only by miraculous phenomena. In their psychoanalytic theories Freud, Lacan and Kristeva regard fear of uncertainty as the most powerful human emotion; thus it is clear why horror genre continues to attract attention of modern audience. Early gothic novels are characterised by the portrayal of dark sides of both the world and personality that usually result in characters’ madness. Modern day horror creates a more profound analysis of the suppression of sexual desires and interprets gothic elements with irony or parody.
The aim of this dissertation is two-fold: 1) to analyse the emergence of modern day horror literature and films from nineteenth-century gothic, and 2) to utilise a psychoanalytic framework of Freud, Lacan and Kristeva to explain this particular shift. The research is divided into chapters. Chapter 1 provides a statement of the problem that reveals the problematic of the conducted analysis. Chapter 2 briefly analyses historical and social contexts of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, paying attention to the spread of psychology and psychoanalysis. Chapter 3 conducts a general observation of some critical works that are written on the discussed issue. Chapter 4 points at the research methods that are applied for the analyses. Chapter 5 investigates in depth different aspects of gothic and modern day horror through a psychoanalytic framework, evaluating such gothic romances as The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, The Italian by Ann Radcliffe, Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker and films of Alfred Hitchcock, as well as some modern horror films.
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