Behind the Gothic Tradition by Hopelessly_perfectionist (February, 2012)

       The real history of The Gothic begins in the 18th century, when it signified a “barbarous, medieval and supernatural past” (Punter 3).  The term was used derogatively about art; architecture and writing that failed to conform to the standards of the traditional taste.  Gothic implied the lack of reason, morality and beauty of feudal beliefs, customs and works.  The popularity of the Gothic tradition occurred as part of the radical political, economic and social changes that were taking place: emerging at a time of industrial revolution and increasingly secular views, the eighteen-century Gothic fascination with a past of chivalry, violence, magical beings and malevolent aristocrats was linked to the shifts from feudal to commercial practices in which notions of property, government and society were undergoing massive transformations (Punter 4).  Along with these shifts, ideas about nature, art and subjectivity were also being reassessed.

Easy targets for satire, however, the first gothic romances started to become less popular among the general public due to their extravagances of plot.  Still, gothic elements continued to be used by renowned authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nataniel Hawthorne and others. 

Poe was indeed one of the most important and innovative representatives of the Gothic tradition in the 19^th century. Few writers in the English language have left a legacy like his.  He was one of the main introducers of the Gothic to the American society. In his works, which are often centered more on timeless matters of individual psychology than of the social issues of his day (Amper 53), all forms of horror can be found. Poe´s international celebrity and reputation as a writer owe much to one of his best-known works, The Raven.

The authors of early gothic works were attracted to such tradition as a means of rebelling against the emphasis on rationality and order that dominated much of the 18^th century.  That emphasis was characteristic of The Age of Enlightenment, an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that promoted the use of reason to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in both Church and state. 

Different from the authors mentioned above, Poe seems quite comfortable describing the artistic process in terms that privilege reason over intuition and consciousness over the unconscious.  Indeed, in his essay The Philosophy of Composition, he states that:

It is [his] design to render it manifest that no one point in [The Raven´s] composition is referable either to accident or intuition; that the work proceeded step by step, to its completion, with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem (7).

Thus, in Poe´s view any thought could find expression if one attends deliberately to method.

In his Philosophy of Composition Poe also says that beauty “is the sole legitimate province of the poem,” beauty itself being “an effect” rather than “a quality”.  Here, one could wonder if beauty, as subjective as such term is (whatever type of beauty we may be referring to), can only be achieved by following a rigorous method, by having absolutely freedom to put one´s feelings and thoughts into words, or by the convergence of these two contrasting conditions.         

Thus Poe, as  we can see, not only did not use the Gothic to rebel against the overemphasis of rationality that existed at that time, but quite the opposite, he stated that reason determines every possible aspect involved in the production of poetry.  Irony, however, might underlie such assertion, idea which will be further elaborated on the lines below.

At this point we might rightly assume that the Gothic movement was not uniform.  Instead, different writers chose to include gothic features in their works in order to fulfill a variety of purposes.  For Poe, as we have already said, the introduction of gothic elements was not a way to rebel, as it was for many other writers, but a means of raising questions about both the psychological state of his characters and the power of the unconscious to influence our perceptions and behaviors. 

Throughout his narrative poem The Raven Poe provides us with several examples that might lead us to question the mental sanity of the protagonist: at the beginning of the poem, for example, the guy seems to hear a tapping at his door, however, when he proceeds to open it he finds nothing but darkness.  Such incident makes us wonder if indeed the guy heard a tapping or if it was all a product of his imagination, and a sign that he was actually going crazy as a result of the loss of his lover.  Moreover, after opening the door the man whispers into the darkness “Lenore!,” hoping, as irrational as it might appear to us, for his lover to return from beyond the grave.  Such incident, along with the fact that the guy willingly engages in conversation with an animal, might too be seen as a distinctive sign of his disturbed state of mind.

Indeed, several critics have interpreted The Raven as “a manifestation of the speaker´s abnormal psychology, the effect of an internal breakdown” (Bloom 49).  Edward Davidson (qted. in Bloom 49) reads the poem as a case study of a mind that is witnessing its own disintegration, and in doing so, the poem explores with dramatic intensity the themes of remembrance, grief, guilt, obsession, instability and the human capacity for self-torture. Other critics, however, have argued that the poem cannot be explained simply as a psychological imbalance because the speaker responds to real events, sensory phenomena, and powerful memories.  Still others have asked whether Poe was not in the Philosophy of Composition subtly ironizing this two plausible psychological interpretations when implying that writing a poem was a purely methodical process, similar to solving a mathematical problem, and that any literary work should only be written after the author has decided how it will end, and more important, which specific emotional response is meant to generate in the readers (Bloom 49). In the light of a deeper analysis one might wonder whether The Raven was born more from passion than from reason, since expressing one’s feelings is hardly a methodical process. In such case, doubts about the veracity of the Philosophy of Composition would undoubtedly emerge.

The variety of psychological issues dealt with in The Raven has been a topic for discussion among different writers for a long time.  Indeed, a number of elements including death, grief, love and mental sanity find their place in the poem.  And although such topics have led to the writing of countless other poems, Poe’s ability to present them within an atmosphere of suspense is what makes his work original.

However, as it is the case with poetry in general, the issues that might have given rise to the poem in the first place will never be identified with total accuracy.  Human beings are driven to act from endless reasons, therefore the portrayal of a same situation might stem from of a myriad of motives.

Poe also incorporates gothic elements in his works to further complement the mood he wishes to convey.  The speaker sitting at midnight, the time being “bleak December”–the start of winter–, the purple curtains and the darkness of the night create an atmosphere of uneasiness and suspense, engaging the reader in the story in such a way that he feels impelled to continue reading in spite of what might come next.

An eerily bleak narrative poem, The Raven digs into the hidden horrors of the human mind as it traces a student´s descent into madness, moving from sorrow over the loss of his lover to utter despair and eventually frenzied terror and self-torture.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold.  Edgar Allan Poe.  Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.  48-49.  Web.  5        December 2011.

Punter, David.  A Companion to the Gothic.  Blackwell Publishers, 2001.  3-4.  Web.  14 November 2011.