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[White Man]

CELEBRATE the new year by cracking open a thick, leisurely paced gothic novel! From the genre-making work of Horace Walpole to the classic Ann Radcliffe.

Where to start? Let me help. I've read just about all that are in print, and a few that aren't:

The Monk by Matthew Lewis - Incest, murder, sexual depravity, yada yada yada. Crazy ass monk lives in a monastery in Spain and does BAD BAD things to women.

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin - Melmoth is cursed with eternal life. The only way he could die in peace is to give up his 'gift' to someone foolish enough to take it. The catch? He has to tell them all the downsides to eternal life, as well. Probably my favorite in the genre. Oscar Wilde went by the name Melmoth after he was released from Prison. This book has an interesting history.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe - It's said that Radcliffe lived sucha boring life that her biographer gave up on trying to document it. You wouldn't think that could be possible after reading this, easily her best. A downright trippy plot with the downright best Romantic era descriptions make this book the defacto standard for the genre. Excellent characters, which is sort of weird for the genre.

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole - The first gothic novel. Short. You'll notice that there's not many short gothic novels. A side-effect of being an offshoot of the Romantic period. The plot is overblown to the point of cartooniness. It's a shamefully addictive page turner. Possibly the 18th century equivalent to The DaVinci Code.

I could toss out more if people are interested. These books are silly, but extremely amusing.

Remember, keep Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey out of this. She is trash, and even more damning, a female writer.

PS: Ann Radcliffe is an acceptable female author because Mysteries of Udolpho reminds me of an episode of Scooby Doo.

 

[D2M15]

Otranto

'Ortranto', surely? I named a cat Ortranto once, but I got better.

edit: My god, I was a goth and wrong. Wronger.

 

[White Man]

Don't fret. I'm a member at a goth club. I'm not goth, but enough of the people there find me amusing enough to keep around. Cheap drinks! No cover! Hey!

EDIT: And no, it's 'Otranto.' You (or rather, your cat) was living a lie.

I went through a similar experience the other day. I was reading Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake, and I noticed the word 'San Bernardino.' My eyes blew wide open and I tapped on the shoulder of my coworker (from California) like a total spaz.

"Is this how you correctly spell this word?"

"Yeah."

"No, it can't be. Frank Zappa says it without that second 'r.' DAMN YOU FRANK ZAPPA!!!!!

And I was never the same again.

 

[border]

I admire your intelligence and literary awareness, but I'm never sure why you post these threads that (in this forum) are guaranteed DOA. I predict that someone will post a picture of a goth with a book photoshopped into it, then we will slide towards page 2 obscurity.

I never read The Monk, though I did read a really long essay in film class about its relationship to the movie The Wicker Man. Of course I have a hard time getting much around essaies that focus heavily on works I haven't read or seen....and at the time I hadn't seen The Wicker Man either.

Can't say I was ever really in love with the gothic genre, despite listening to a lot of goth music But then again, I've only really done the tourist's survey of it -- Frankenstein and Dracula (late gothic I guess) and some Poe stuff (Southern gothic). I also read Carmilla when I was really young, but mostly just remember being disappointed that it didn't have the hot lesbian action I was looking for. I like their sense of the burlesque and the uncanny but they seem a bit dull for the most part.

 

[White Man]

I admire your intelligence and literary awareness, but I'm never sure why you post these threads that (in this forum) are guaranteed DOA. I predict that someone will post a picture of a goth with a book photoshopped into it, then we will slide towards page 2 obscurity.

Neither do I, really. If there were somewhere better to go, I'd be there.

EDIT: In the interest of attracting more people to the topic, I just did a google image search on "canadian tits." This was the image that came up:

I'm doomed.

 

[border]

Is January actually Romantic/Gothic Novel Month, as ordained by some sort of literary authority? Or just something you made up for the thread title?

 

[White Man]

I just made it up. It was a shade away from being Dickens Month. Consider yourself saved. That man got paid by the word.

 

[SD-Ness]

What about Anne Rice?

And who's that in your new avatar?

 

[White Man]

What about Anne Rice?

I will murder you. And I will leave the horse you rode in on to the apparently abundant furries here.

And who's that in your new avatar?

The Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac. I went over this in another thread concerning the fascists that touch our lives.

 

[border]

I don't think Anne Rice is of any significance in any critical or historical sense. A footnote at best, since she is responsible for making the idea of being a vampire very appealing rather than horrifying. Though Stoker's vampires with their "wanton voluptuous" nature were kind of appealling anyway To Victorian sensibilities they probably still would have been horrifying though...

Next month has to be African American Novel Month. I am thinking about reading Infants of the Spring but maybe have to read more essays from Harlem Renaissance to get all the jokes.

 

[Ill Saint]

Poppy Z. Brite, surely the Queen of all things Goth romantic?

 

[White Man]

No, no, no! This is about REAL gothic novels, which is why 'DARK ROMANTIC' is in the thread title.

Romantic == late 18th-early to mid-19th century novels that dealt with nature and human emotion. The period was dead before the US Civil War, though I'd say it ended a bit before. Keep your Anne Rice and Poppy Z. brite far, far away! They're also females, for chrissakes!

 

[border]

So does Dracula (1897) count or not?

 

[totoro'd]

Are you just a misogynist toward female authors, or in general?

 

[White Man]

So does Dracula (1897) count or not?

Not only does Dracula not even come close to fitting into either the official Romantic dates or the White Man Romantic dates, but it's clearly a Victorian novel with a structure borrowed from the Restoration period. Also, being a monster book, it's not really concerned with nature. The best Dark Romantic books only hinted at the supernatural.

EDIT:

Are you just a misogynist toward female authors, or in general?

It's a running joke among artsy people. And philosophers.

 

[border]

Oh. Well now I look stupid =( I thought it was considered gothic despite being outside the generally accepted timeframe. Like Woyzeck is Modern outside of Modern timeframe.

Last time I try to prop up a book thread :lol

 

[White Man]

Oh. Well now I look stupid =( I thought it was considered gothic despite being outside the generally accepted timeframe. Like Woyzeck is Modern outside of Modern timeframe.

Last time I try to prop up a book thread :lol

No! Don't leave! You're responsible for half the posts that aren't mine in this thread!

Keep in mind that to the non lit-nerd, Dracula is probably the canonical gothic novel, even though it doesn't fit into the artistic genre at all.

 

[border]

No, it's actually quite sad because I'm supposed to be a lit nerd. Graduated magna cum laude with a degree in English last month. My conception of novels that aren't medieval romance or post-1900 is pretty bad though (not too much better w/ plays). Kind of my fault for not taking a very diverse course load, but oh well.... =\

 

[drohne]

i've been rereading ulysses. for whatever reason. it's been a few years. this time i managed to independently identify about half the parodies in the "oxen of the sun" chapter. there's a pretty funny walpole parody in there. the dickens parody is quite good too. carry on.

edit: no, come to think of it, i doubt i specifically recognized half the parodies. maybe a quarter.

 

[hXc_thugg]

I have read all of these novels save Melmoth the Wanderer! I will read it now though, because your synopsis made it sound pretty interesting!

 

[White Man]

i've been rereading ulysses. for whatever reason. it's been a few years. this time i managed to independently identify about half the parodies in the "oxen of the sun" chapter. there's a pretty funny walpole parody in there. the dickens parody is quite good too. carry on.

edit: no, come to think of it, i doubt i specifically recognized half the parodies. maybe a quarter.

That chapter is a parody of just about everything, you know?

Hmmm, might be about time to reread that. it's been about 2 years. I've learned a lot since my last readthrough.

 

[Ill Saint]

No, no, no! This is about REAL gothic novels, which is why 'DARK ROMANTIC' is in the thread title.

Romantic == late 18th-early to mid-19th century novels that dealt with nature and human emotion. The period was dead before the US Civil War, though I'd say it ended a bit before. Keep your Anne Rice and Poppy Z. brite far, far away! They're also females, for chrissakes!

Heh!

 

[MASB]

No, no, no! This is about REAL gothic novels, which is why 'DARK ROMANTIC' is in the thread title.

Romantic == late 18th-early to mid-19th century novels that dealt with nature and human emotion. The period was dead before the US Civil War, though I'd say it ended a bit before. Keep your Anne Rice and Poppy Z. brite far, far away! They're also females, for chrissakes!

When exactly is the Romantic period in literature said to occur? (Knowing that different people have different ideas). In music the Romantic period is more or less considered to be 1820-1900.

 

[White Man]

The Romantic period in lit starts at some undefined point in the late 17th century, and is apparently dead by 1880. It is marked by lengthy, cushioned, novels with a focus on the nature of humanity and naturalism. Now that I look at it from a viewpoint of worl lit, maybe you could say it lasted up until 1880. Except in England and France, where unique developments brought in new literary eras.

In England, we had the Victorian (or the Dionysian or Pre-Modern period) spurred by the rise of Queen Victoria. While she has the rep of a total prude, she was one of the greatest patrons of literature the world has ever seen. Naturally, with her blessing, writing became somewhat pompous and bloated, mirroring the outrageous class sytem of the time. Victorian novels have a tendency to be very padded; a lot of these writers (see: Dickens and Oscar Wilde) were paid by the word. . .and they exploited that fact. This produced some very excellent, leisurely paced novels along with a bunch of crap that's painful to read (see: anyone that used Dickens as a Mentor). Victorian novels have a slight tendency to lean towards the artificial, whether it be through overt sentimentalism or through crippled, tragic children.

In France, the emergence of one Charles Baudelaire (in 1845) brought on the Symbolist Era, and later The Decadence, probably my two favorite literary periods. The power of Baudelaire's potion was based on a cruel mix of imagery, humanity, and artificiality; a bizarre and skewed reaction to Naturalism. Whereeas Romantic lit played to the human heart, Symbolist works (and more extremely, Decadent work) aimed at the heart of a freakish, twisted-ss carnie. The Decadence is effectivel a spin-off of Symbolism, but it's notable enough to get it's own mention. Ar art culture that celebrated complete depravity and shockingly dark behaviour? Aesthetics Gone Wild, I say. Lets look at one of the classics of the Decadence, The Torture Garden, an illustrated novel by Octave Mirbeau.

What is this book about?

Following the twin trails of desire and depravity to a shocking, sadistic paradise - a garden in China where torture is practiced as an art form - a dissolute Frenchman discovers the true depths of degradation beyond his prior bourgeois imaginings. Entranced by a resolute Englishwoman whose capacity for debauchery knows no bounds, he capitulates to her every whim amid an ecstatic yet tormenting incursion of visions, scents, caresses, pleasures, horrors, and fantastic atrocities. The Torture Garden is exceptional for its detailed descriptions of sexual euphoria and exquisite torture, its political critique of government corruption and bureaucracy, and its revolutionary portrait of a woman - which challenges even contemporary models of feminine authority. This is one of the most truly original works ever imagined.

Black, black stuff. I will shut up now. This book is NWS! It is practically porn. With footbinding and awful, awful asian stereotypes.

 

[teiresias]

Does Wuthering Heights qualify? I LOOOOOOOOOVE that novel.

 

[Outdoor Miner]

Thank you for making this thread. It was "Melmoth the Wanderer" I wanted to read a year ago that never made my mental list when at bookstores.

Checking out "The Mystery of Udopho" as well, love the description.

Consider these puppies read!