Hilary Mantel's Relation To The Gothic Tradition
The purpose of this research is to investigate the British novelist Hilary Mantel’s relation to the gothic tradition. Actually, Mantel’s novels, which are hard to categorize, ranging from historical fiction to autobiographical writing going through black comedies, can be read from a gothic perspective. Accordingly, Mantel’s writing can be seen as a contribution to the gothic aesthetic which has and continues to witness various developments from its appearance to the present time. The major novels chosen for such an exploration are respectively Fludd, The Giant O’Brien and Wolf Hall. After providing an overview of the genre’s different mutations, my work shall highlight the gothic elements found in Mantel’s novels, chiefly represented by the haunting of the past, aspects of madness and terror, the dark side of human nature, settings, character portrayal, plot construction and …show more content…
I shall try to demonstrate in the literature review chapter The Gothic Aesthetic: Overview and Assessment that “gothic” is indeed a controversial term through providing an overview of the complexity of the gothic arena and its continuity to modern times, stressing certain conventions and affinities which relate to the works of Mantel.
In the second chapter Fludd: The Haunting of the Past, I shall demonstrate that this novel contains the gothic element of anti-Catholicism, secrets, transubstantiation, transformation and the representation of the devil, all of which belong to the gothic tradition. Relying on the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva, this chapter is devoted to decipher the gothic symbols presented in the novel. A great deal of the examination will be concerned in identifying the ways in which the main character the alchemist called Fludd personifies the
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Compare And Contrast Tell Tale Heart And The Raven
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Analysis Of Matthew Lewis The Monk And Ann Radcliffe's The Italian
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Literary Elements In Edgar Allan Poe
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Sexual Anxieties In Bram Stoker's Dracula
650 Words | 3 PagesThis unsettling evokes some of the key features of the Gothic, such as the use of phantasmagoria, transgression, and excesses, all of which disturbed the reader by surrounding them with dark reflections of a reality portrayed through fiction. Pacts with the devil to obtain one’s desires, monks and aristocrats who revel in luxury — even if this means they must stain their hands with blood —, vampires and mad scientists: all corrupt one’s morals, all corrupt the false appearance of serenity. Likewise, the female vampires who torment Jonathan Harker disturb the harmony of the domestic sphere and unsettle the delicate balance between the private and the public domain. These vampiric women are marked by heightened sensuality and tacked to other fatal women that permeate art and European literature at the end of the nineteenth century. In this novel, fear and desire are often confused, a clue modern anxieties surrounding desire toward sensuous but degrading bodies.
Edgar Allen Poe: The Writing Style Of Edgar Allan Poe
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