English

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English Irish Gothicand Their Modernist Turns

• Ying-hsiung Chou
• yhchou_at_mail.nctu.edu.tw
• ??????????? (Dec. 9, 2007)

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I. Gothicism and/or Modernity
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In a Metro StationEzra Pound (1913)

• The apparition of these faces in the crowd
• Petals on a wet, black bough

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Gothicism and Modernity

• Gothicism in modern times
• literature, architecture, film, music, fashion,
  etc.
• ModernityGothicism?

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The American Gothic, by Grant Wood (1930)
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Two Faces of Modernity I (positive)

• Modernist disenchantment (Weber)
• Then
• Enchantment of the world dominated by myth and
  religion in the Medieval world
• Now
• Its disenchantment through science

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Modernity characterized by

• secularization (in religion, e.g., Protestantism)
• rationalization/legitimation., e.g.,
• capitalist rational management system
• bureaucracy in governance through the rule of law

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Representing Modernity I

• Perspective in visual art
• Harmonic principles in music
• Liberalist realism in the novel

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Liberalism and the Rise of the Novel

• Liberalist emphasis on individuality (and
  development of its potentials) (Ian Watt)
• Liberalist adversariality principle through which
  a person coexists with her fellow citizens
• Human beings are rational and are thus capable of
  sorting out their problems in their community
  without recourse to absolute powers
• For example, Bildungsroman (novel of formative
  education, e.g., Wilhelm Meisters
  Apprenticeship, Portrait of the Artist as a Young
  Man)

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Two Faces of Modernity II Modernist
(re)enchantment? (negative)

• social pathology (vs. social progress), e.g.,
• anomie (social instability caused by the
  disruption of order, which is responsible for
  suicide, crime and mental disorder cf. Durkheim)
• alienation (Marx)
• the gothic/grotesque

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Gothic Modernityor, the underside of modernity

• Woolf haunted house of the mind
• Joyce capitalist specteralization

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Woolfs experimentations on

• The mind and the world, and their
  interpenetration
• By way of probing the underside of reality
• A reality that is felt to be unacceptable (due to
  war, paternalism, materialism, etc.)

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A Haunted House(from Virginia Woolf, Monday
or Tuesday 1921)

• A classic Gothic story with
• A ghostly couple
• A haunted house
• Supernatural happenings
• Innocent subjects

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Gothicism with a Modernist TurnCognitive
Hesitancies

• A ghostly couple revisit their old house looking
  for it (that theyve left behind or left
  unachieved before they died?)
• They go about their search, trying as much as
  possible not to disturb the current tenants.

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• But the latter (the narrator being one of them)
  are already aware of their visit
• While the house is haunted by the visitors, the
  ghostly couple are also being stalked by the
  narrator
• And in the melee of knowing and being known,
  the house also takes on a life of its own and
  pronounces, Safe, safe, safe

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• To add to the confusion, nature--as an extension
  of the house, including whats inside and outside
  --also joins in, making sense further
  inaccessible
• The outside scene is seen darkly through the
  glass (cf. 1 Corinthians 12 Now we see through
  a glass, darkly)
• And as the natural world is projected unto the
  domestic space, it becomes free-floating and
  intangible

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• As the narrator pushes for an explanation for the
  visitation, death is introduced as it has already
  taken the ghostly couple away from each other
  hundreds of years ago
• Death was the glass death was between us

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• The story ends with I (the narrator) waking up
  (cf. human voices wake us, and we drown,)
  crying,
• Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in
  the heart

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Six Implications

• Am I the one youve been looking for? Or, am I
  the light in the heart? (The perceiver turned
  into the perceived?)
• And, like narrator, like reader
• Am I, the reader, the haunted, somehow suffering
  from my inability to know the world
• And yet am paradoxically implicated in narration
  (i.e., the focus being no longer on the
  hard-nosed world out there, but the mind itself,
  asking What do I know cf. Montaign )?

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Strategies of a Modern Gothic Reading

• 1. Floating pronouns (in the absence of fixed
  antecedents) they (the ghostly couple?), one
  (the resident in the house, I?), it (the buried
  treasure, the past, death?)
• 2. countrapuntality of self and other

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• 3. Seeing and being seen as two-way, reciprocal
  cognition
• I, the narrator, am left undisturbed and
• I stalk them even though they could not been
  seen, because,
• we are separated by the glass, which is death

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• 4. The interpenetration of the real and the
  ghostly
• The world is seen darkly in/through the glass
• The world casts its shadows in the drawing
  roomspread about the floor, hung upon the
  walls, pendant from the ceilingwhat?
• But the world cannot be grasped empirically. .
  .my hands are empty

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• 5. The interpenetration of the animate and the
  inanimate
• The house seems to be energized by the visitation
  and takes on a life of its own, providing a
  shelter to the visitants (Safe, safe, safe)
• Above all, the house is intelligent and
  knowledgeable about the buried treasure

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• 6. The interpenetration of life and death
• Our eyes darken we hear no steps beside us we
  see no lady spread her ghostly cloak
• Waking, I cried Oh, is this your buried
  treasure? The light in the heart.
• (Existential and epistemological death-in-life?)

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Two Modes of Death in Modern Life

• Woolf the ambivalences of human intelligence
  (i.e., its/her inability to know vis-à-vis the
  privileging of reverie) renders people less than
  human (epistemological aporia)
• Joyce the dehumanized condition of city life
  reduces people to a stage of paralyzed automatons
  and hence death

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The Dead(from James Joyce, Dubliners
1907,1914)

• Biblical Gabriel An archangel in the Bible, he
  was employed to announce the birth of John the
  Baptist to Zechariah and to announce the birth of
  Jesus to the Virgin Mary
• Gabriel Conroy attends a Christmas party and
  despite his self-claimed voice of enlightenment
  finds himself increasingly alienated, even
  accused of being a stranger, a West Briton (149)

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• As the party winds down, Gabriel sees a woman
  standing at the top of the staircase listening to
  some indistinct music. The woman turns out to be
  his wife,
• but there is something about her that he cannot
  quite see through
• The distant music turns out to be a tune Grettas
  teenage lover once sang to her before he died
  soon after serenading her in the rain

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• Gabriels alienation multiplies. He is
  physically denied by his wife.
• The story ends with Gabriel feeling the onset of
  death
• one by one they were all becoming shades (176).
  He imagines he sees the form of a young man
  standing under a dripping tree

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• The solid world itself which these dead had one
  time reared and lived in was dissolving and
  dwindling (All Thats Solid Melts into Air.)
• The time had come for him to set out on his
  journey westward
• Voices from/of the other (world)

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II. English Gothic
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Psychological grounds for Gothicism

• Progress or regression/degeneration
• Reason or un-reason (the unconscious)

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Historical grounds for Gothicism?

• French Revolution
• Industrial Revolution(s)

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All That is Solid Melts into Air

• What seems is not what is
• Spectralization of modern life
• The Adoration of the Magi (1897) by Yeats
• Midsummer Night Madness (1932) by OFaolain
• A Haunted House (1921) by Woolf

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Figuration between the Marvellous and the Uncanny

• Accepting the supernatural as it is
• Realizing the potential inadequacy of a rational
  epistemological (i.e., how we know what we know)
  outlook
• Cognitive hesitancies

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Hesitancies 1

• Past and Present/Future
• Past coming back to haunt present, e.g.,
  Carmilla, The Words on the Window Pane.
• Self and Other
• Self being possessed by Other, e.g., The
  Adoration of the Magi

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Hesitancies 2

• Real and Un-real
• Historical settings and characters transformed
  into their uncanny other, e.g., Midsummer Night
  Madness
• Textual/Visual and historical
• Textually constructed world superimposed upon the
  real world, e.g., Dracula

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English and/or Irish Gothic 1(Cf. English Gothic
slide 45)

• Minerva Press (London) publishes a large portion
  of Gothic novels written during the 1790s by
  women on Irish themes
• English Gothic Contra-realist outlook
• things are not what they seem, esp. in modern
  times dominated by reason, technology and
  bureaucracy
• representation of the uncanny as an act of
  empowerment

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RealismIan Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957)

• Decline of classical idealism (universal Idea)
• In favor of a modern outlook with emphasis on the
  individual
• Possessive individualism
• Liberal individualism

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English and/or Irish Gothic 2

• Irish Gothic
• A branch of English Gothic
• A uniquely Irish/Anglo-Irish or Anglo-Anglican
  mode
• Attachment to Irish history and politics
  (McCormack 833), or

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English and/or Irish Gothic 3

• Anglo-Irish double bind (choosing between two
  unsatisfactory decisions)
• demonization of the indigenous Catholic tradition
  (for its corrupt practices)
• realization of their own identity with that which
  they demonize (cf. more Irish than the Irish)

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Recap Irish Gothic 1

• A branch of English Gothic, with specific local
  colors, e.g.,
• Catholic/Irish Church
• Nationalism/sectarianism
• national character(s), Protestant magic/occultism
  (Freemasons)
• famine
• etc.

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Recap Irish Gothic 2

• A unique mode of representing/reading the Irish
  experience
• But what precisely is unique about the Irish
  Gothic?

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Speculations

• Ireland as a Gothic space, which is paradoxical,
  anomalous
• Demonization of Irish and Identifying with the
  Irish
• Anglo-Irish writing in a Gothic mode to make up
  for their declining influence (Roy Foster, in
  Killeen 2)
• Gothic writing as exorcism

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English Gothic 1(Periodization)

• Classic/Literary Gothic (1764-1820s), often
  dealing with dynastic disorders in an alien
  setting involving victimizations (of a hapless
  maiden)
• The Castle of Otronto (1764) recovered text with
  dubious authenticity and dynastic disorders (cf.
  MacPherson, Ossian, 1765)
• The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) the heroines
  gradual realization of her identity as a
  illegitimate child (Miles 46-47)

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Strawberry Hill
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English Gothic 2

• Romantic (1820s-1840s)
• Frankenstein (1818, 1831)
• Instinctual self (vs. rational self)
• Forbidden knowledge, overreaching (the Faustian)
  (vs. Grace)
• Science and reason (vs. religion)
• Monstrosity (vs. humanity)

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Schloss-Frankenstein
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Benjamin Franklin, 1752
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Luigi Galvani, 1771
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Bioelectricity
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English Gothic 3

• Victorian (1840s-1890s)
• Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
  self and other good and evil outward
  respectability and inner lust
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) fin-de-siecle
  quest for authenticity and spontaneity

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Gothic Revival

• 1840s-
• A new movement in architecture favoring the
  medieval over the classical

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Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
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Victoria Tower, Westminster
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Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh
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Richard Mansfield, 1887 (Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
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Deacon William Brodie (1741-1788, councillor,
craftsman, thief)
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English Gothic 4

• Modern (1890s-)
• Dracula, 1897
• Occultism against science
• Desire against Manners

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Castle Dracula
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Dracula (1931)
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Vlad Tepes Dracula (1431-1476)
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III. Irish Gothic
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Anglo-Irish Ascendancy Four Phases (1)

• First Settlement (1603)
• Old (Gaelic) Irish
• Old English
• vs.
• Anglo-Irish/Anglican (vs. Catholics,
  Presbyterians and Dissenters)

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• Irish Rebellion and Re-conquests (1652-60)
• Execution of rebels and Catholics after 1641
  Irish uprising and settlement to the Caribbean
• Proposed dispossessing of land originally owned
  by the Catholics to make way for the
  adventurers/settlers (notably from Scotland)

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Anglo-Irish Ascendancy Four Phases (2)

• Ascendancy (Anglo-Irish/Anglican)
• Irish rising and the Williamite War (1689-1691)
• Penal Laws against the Catholics and the
  Presbyterians
• By mid-18th century, 95 of land in the
  Protestants ownership

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• 1798 rising (Emmet)
• Act of Union 1801

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Anglo-Irish Ascendancy Four Phases (3)

• Contraction
• Absentee landlords
• Catholic Emancipations (1829)
• Potato Famine (1845-52)
• Food shipped to England
• Restrictions on relief funds

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Anglo-Irish Ascendancy Four Phases (4)

• Siege
• Home Rule (to grant autonomy to the territory)
• legislation aimed at ending exploiting the Irish
  since the Act of Union
• Gladstones unsuccessful attempts to pass a Home
  Rule bill in 1886, 1893
• revived in 1912 but interrupted by WW1
• Irish War of Independence (1919-1922)

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Irish Gothic 1

• Late 18th century
• Regina Maria Roche, Children of the Abbey (1796)
• Mrs. Kelly, Ruins of Avondale Priory (1796)
• Mrs. F.C. Patrick, The Irish Heiress (1797)
• the Wife of an Officer, Most Ghosts (1798)
• Mrs. Colpoy, The Irish Excursion (1801)

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Irish Gothic 2

• Charles Robert Maturin (1780-1824)
• Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
• insanity as a symptom/trope of divided loyalty
  during the civil war

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Huguenots

• French Protestants emigrating to England and
  Ireland in the late 17th century
• 1598 Edict of Nantes
• 1572 Massacre of St. Barthelomew
• 1629 Revocation of Edict
• 1685 400,000 emigrated to England, Netherlands,
  Germany

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Irish Gothic 3

• Joseph Sheridan LeFanu (1814-1873) Carmilla
  (1872)
• Vampire Mircalla comes back after 2 hundred years
  and disguise herself as Carmilla (Lauras
  roommate) and Millarca (the Generals niece)
  (anagrams)
• A past that refuses to be put to rest returns to
  haunt modern people

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Illustration of Carmilla from The Dark Blue by D.
H. Friston, 1872 http//www.lacrypte.net/images/c
armilla1.jpg
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Irish Gothic 4

• Bram Stoker (1847-1912)
• Dracula (1897)

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Irish Gothic 5

• W.B. Yeats, John Millington Synge, Elizabeth
  Bowen

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References

• Killeen, Jarlath. Irish Gothic A Theoretical
  Introduction. The Irish Journal of Gothic and
  Horror Studies. http//irishgothichorrorjournal.ho
  mestead.com/jarlathprinter.html
• McCormack, W.J. Irish Gothic and After. The
  Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. Eds.
  Seamus Deane (General Editor), Andrew Carpenter
  and Jonathan Williams. Derry Field Day
  Publications, 1991. Vol. II, 831-854.

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• Miles, Robert. Ann Radcliffe and Matthew
  Lewis. A Companion to the Gothic. Ed. David
  Punter. Oxford Blackwell, 2001. 41-57.
• Sage, Victor. Irish Gothic C.R. Maturin and
  J.S. LeFanu. A Companion to the Gothic. Ed.
  David Punter. Oxford Blackwell. 81-93.

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IV. Appendix Nationalist Gothicism
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• The Terrific Register or, Record of Crimes,
  Judgments, Providences and Calamities, 2 vols.
  (London Sherwood, Jones and Co., 1825).

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The Terrific Register 217 (The Midnight
Assassination)
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Robert Emmet (1778-1803)
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• Unconscious act as a result of some supernatural
  visitations connected with nationalism
• Cf. Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902) by Yeats about
  1798 Irish Rebellion

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Maud Gonne (1866-1953)

• The End