Gothic Lit notes

Gothic Literature: Characterized by grotesque characters, bizarre situations, and violent events.
-Orginated in Europe 19th century.
-Edgar Allan Poe, Nathial Hawthorne
Romantic Writers:
-Saw limitaion of reason and age of reason
-celebrated induvial spirit of emotion and imagination of basic elements of human nature.
-Splendors of nature inspired romantics more than the fear of God and felt a fascination of supernatural.
Transcendentalists: Transcendent forms of truth exis beyond reason and experience.
-Every indivdual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own thought intution.
Gothic Architecture:
-Large cathedrals, irregular placed towers and high windows.
-Gargoyles carvings
-Imaginative distortion
Threshold of unknown: Shadowy region where the fantastic, the demonic, and insane reside.
-Dark side of individualism=Gothic tradition.
-Romans see hope
-Gothic see evil
Poe: Dark castles decaying ancient estates setting for weird events.
-male characters insane
-females beautiful and dead or dying
-plots are extreme
-live burals
Hawthorne: fear, greed, betrayal

The Devil and Tom Walker:
-few miles from massachusetts, Charles Bay, kidd of pirate buried treasures under a tree.
-Kidd was seized in Boston
-In 1727 Tom Walker lived near Kidd and had a wife they both were miserly they would cheat on each other
-Tom took short cut home one day through tall trees and mud gloomy pines, hemlocks pits, moss and dark pools he had ran into and indian post and stopped to rest.
-Tom lifted up the sod he found a skull
-he met a black man who said to leave it alone
-went home told his wife his wife went out later and never came back he went out to find her and all he found was her apron and he liver in it. he was kinda happy about his and the man said to become a broker and he would make lots of money he become rich sold his sole to the devil and rode off into hell. the woods was hell and the devil took him and killed him.
The Masque of the Red Death:
-Allegory- work of 2 layers of meaning where persons object and events stand for abstract ideas and qualities.
-Clock- time is ruunning out on your life,. you cant stop the clock of death at same point it will get you and you cant do anything to stop it.
-the different rooms were the path of death as you passed through each room you got closer to death and dying.
The Raven:
-Raven- bird of prophecy, evil omen, and death.
-End of rhyme- simila or identical sounds at the ends of lines
-Internal rhyme- rhyme within a line
-Rhyme scheme- the basic pattern of the end of rhymes
The signal man: Charles Dickens
Spectra- the ghost
The Fall of the House of Usher:
-Poe nit effect: single overall feeling