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The Gothic Element in Shelley's Writings

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The Gothic Element in Shelley's Writings 31o/96 THE GOTHIC ELEMENT IN SHELLEY'S WRITINGS THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State Teachers College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By Olna Oatis Boaz, B. A. Denton, Texas January, 1948 151916 151916 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. SHELLEY'S INTRODUCTION TO GOTHICISM . 1 II. IMITATION OF GOTHICISM . 18 III. TRANSMUTATION OF GOTHICISM . 82 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 0 0.. 0 .0 0 .. 0 .0 .. .0 .. .124 1ii CHAPTER I SHETLLEY'S INTRODUCTION TO GOTHICISM A sense of wonder, a love of the strange, a desire to feel the icy touch of fear are deeply rooted instincts of man. All tellers of tales know the lure of the marvelous. The shadow of terror and the sense of wonder lurk in folk tales and ballads, in myths, and in legends. The myth makers of civilization's infancy, the story tellers of olden times, the court minstrels, singing of heroic exploits, the old housewives in chimney corners, telling their tales of fairies, ghosts, and goblins, have all made use of the strange, the terrible, and the wonderful. Shelley, as befitted any boy gifted with a lively curiosity and a vivid imagination, was interested in the wonderful, the mysterious, and the strange. He loved to relate wonder tales to his little sisters; and he invented a fabulous tortoise inhabiting Warnham Pond, an equally fabulous snake of great age, and an old alchemist, who lived in the attic of Field Place. These flights of his versatile imagination excited the children and filled their minds with a pleasurable dread. Shelley punched holes in the ceiling of a low passage to find some hidden chamber on which to 1 2 fasten newer and more startling tales. For amusement, Shel- ley and his sisters dressed themselves in strange costumes to personate spirits and fiends.1 His interest in tales of the marvelous remained with him while he was at Eton; for here he continued to relate "his marvelous stories of fairy- land, of apparitions, spirits, and haunted ground, and his speculations were then . of the world beyond the grave.2 Science, also, provided food for his imagination. His interest in the occult sciences, natural philosophy, and chemistry caused him, while he was at Eton, to spend his pocket money on books "relative to these pursuits, on chemical apparatus and materials"; and many of the books treated of magic and witchcraft. He explored by night the traditional haunts of ghosts, and at one time planned to get admission to the vault, or charnel-house, at Warnham Church and to wait there in trembling expectation for ghosts to appear. He consulted his books on the raising of ghosts, and on one occasion during his life at Eton set out to put his knowledge to the test. He took with him a skull, as directed by the books, and pursued his fearful way to a small stream. He stood with one foot on either side of the stream, drank three times from the skull, and waited for the 1 Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shel- .l, p. 22. 2 Roger Ingpen, Shelley in England, p. 47. 3 ghost to appear. Disappointed when nothing happened, he de- cided that he had probably failed to repeat the correct charm.3 This mood of Shelley's youth is recalled in the follow- ing lines from the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty": While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed . The same preoccupation with the dark, the gloomy, and the mysterious is revealed in Alastor; or, the pirit of Soli- tude: I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost Thy messenger, to render up the tale Of what we are. Shelley's imagination was intrigued not only by books on magic and witchcraft, but also by the wildly imaginative literature of the period. Tales of fairies, giants, mon- sters, bandits, assassins, and magicians held a singular fascination for him. Lacking a school library at Sion House, Shelley and his companions secretly patronized a small circulating library at Brentford, where six-penny volumes 3Hogg, op. cit., pp. 36-37. 1~ bound in blue wrappers and containing tales of thrilling ad- venture and of heroic and superhuman passion were available These bluebooks, or "shilling shockers," were very popular during the period of Shelley's youth: Mrs. Radcliffe had retired from the Gothic lists in 1797, and Monk Lewis had admitted in 1801 that the "unheeded spell" of the tale of terror was growing weaker. Yet there were still enough readers in England who would agree with Catherine Morland that books should be "all horrid." The vigilant hacks took their cue, and the cheap presses were soon teeming with "horrid" blue- books. The tale of terror was still very much alive, and in 1803 Shelley and his schoolmates at Sion House were resorting "under the rose" to a low circulating library in Brentford for the treasured blue-books.5 "Apart from the 'bluebooks,' the volumes that most de- lighted Shelley at this time were the romances of Anne Radcliffe.,'Monk Lewis,' and Charlotte Dacre."6 Peacock in his Memoirs of S records Die Raiiber, Goethe's Faust, and four novels of Charles Brockden Brown as being "of all the works with which he was familiar, those which took the deepest root in [the poet's] mind,and had the strongest in- fluence in the formation of his character."7 The prosaic realities of life drove him to the realms of fiction for the feeling of wonder and strangeness that his fancy craved; 4Felix Rabbe, Shelley, the Man and the Poet, I, 34-35. 5William W. Watt, Shilling Shockers of the Gothic School, p. 10. 61ngpen, OP. cit., p. 47. 7 As quoted by Montague Summers in The Gothic Quest, p. 121. g and it is not surprising that he had faith in prodigies, in apparitions.,and in the evocation of the dead.8 Tales of terror had a marked effect upon him, for after reading a horror story, he was subject to strange and sometimes fright- ful dreams, and was haunted by apparitions that bore all the semblance of reality. He was given to waking dreams, a sort of lethargy and abstraction that became habitual to him, and after the fit was over, his eyes flashed, his lips quivered, his voice was tremulous with emotion, a sort of ecstasy came over him, and he talked more like a spirit or an angel than a human being. 9 This literature which exercised so profound an effect on the youthful Shelley was developed by a group of writers known as the Gothic school. This school had its beginning in the reaction against the formal and critical literature of the first half of the eighteenth century. Inspiration was found in the glamor and color of the middle ages, in strange inexplicable occurrences, and in all aspects of na- ture; the "Renascence of Wonder" had begun. The new kind of romance found its first expression in Walpole's Castle of Otranto, which was published on Christmas Eve of 1764. The immediate acceptance and popularity of the Castle of Otranto "is an indication of the eagerness with which the readers of 8Rabbe, p_. cit., pp. 35-36. 9 Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 27. 6 1765 desired to escape from the present and revel for a time in strange, bygone centuries. "10 The first edition was sold out in two months and others followed rapidly. It was translated into French, German, and Italian. Walpole, with his followers -- especially Mrs. Rad- cliffe, Clara Reeve, "Monk" Lewis, Maturin, and Godwin -- developed a set pattern for the narrative of suspense and terror which is termed the Gothic novel. The Gothic novel, in turn, was imitated by the "shilling shockers,'" which were chapbooks of short stories either written according to the accepted pattern of the terror-romance school or boldly condensed from existing stories. The machinery of the Gothic novels and chapbooks de- viates little from the approved model, and is characterized by looseness of plot construction. The stories themselves fall into two general groups: those following such novels as The Monk and The Italian, stories whose principal back- ground was a monastery or convent; and those following the lead of The Castle of Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho, whose setting is the Gothic castle.1 1 New characters appear at random and relate their life histories upon appearing; this device of breaking into the main sequence of events causes confusion and snaps the thread of the story. Further confusion is brought about by the scattering of members of a 1 0 Edith Birkhead, The Tale of Terror, p. 12. 1 Watt, p. citi., p. 21. 7 family all over the earth at the beginning of a story, and gradually drawing them into the main setting and center of action; others, who have been living near each other for a lifetime, find, in the end, that they are brother and sis- ter.1 2 A third complication of events is the running of one or more minor plots in conjunction with the major theme.
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