THE WAY TO OTRANTO: GOTHIC ELEMENTS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH POETRY, 1717-1762 Vahe Saraoorian A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1970 ii ABSTRACT Although full-length studies have been written about the Gothic novel, no one has undertaken a similar study of poetry, which, if it may not be called "Gothic," surely contains Gothic elements. By examining Gothic elements in eighteenth-century poetry, we can trace through it the background to Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel. The evolutionary aspect of the term "Gothic" itself in eighteenth-century criticism was pronounced, yet its various meanings were often related. To the early graveyard poets it was generally associated with the barbarous and uncouth, but to Walpole, writing in the second half of the century, the Gothic was also a source of inspiration and enlightenment. Nevertheless, the Gothic was most frequently associated with the supernatural. Gothic elements were used in the work of the leading eighteenth-century poets. Though an age not often thought remark­ able for its poetic expression, it was an age which clearly exploited the taste for Gothicism, Alexander Pope, Thomas Parnell, Edward Young, Robert Blair, Thomas and Joseph Warton, William Collins, Thomas Gray, and James Macpherson, the nine poets studied, all expressed notes of Gothicism in their poetry. Each poet con­ tributed to the rising taste for Gothicism. Alexander Pope, whose influence on Walpole was considerable, was the first poet of significance in the eighteenth century to write a "Gothic" poem. The reputed place of Pope’s contemporary Thomas Parnell, as the first graveyard poet is confirmed. Different approaches to the Gothic, similar to approaches made by later Gothic novelists, can be clarified by analysis of the works of Young, and Blair. The Wartons and Collins had considerable influence on their followers, while Gray and Macpherson were the poets in whom the Gothic spirit culminated. Had Gothic elements never been exploited by the poets of the eighteenth century, Walpole's The Castle of Otranto might not have been written. Walpole's inspiration for the Gothic, though it quite obviously came from more than one source (including of course Gothic architecture), was derived mainly from the taste for Gothicism which found expression in eighteenth-century English poetry. Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page ONE TOWARD A DEFINITION OF GOTHICISM 1 TWO AUGUSTAN GOTHICISMi ALEXANDER POPE AND THOMAS PARNELL 1$ Twickenham Gothic 16 "Eloisa to Abelard” 19 Transition from Pope to Young 27 THREE VOICES OF DEATH: EDWARD YOUNG AND ROBERT BLAIR 37 Edward Young 38 Robert Blair 1+7 FOUR THE GOTHIC LURE: JOSEPH AND THOMAS WAR TON 3U Joseph Warton 55 Thomas Warton 60 FIVE GENII, GIANTS, AND MONSTERS: WILLIAM COLLINS 68 Collins and Warton 69 The Odes ' 72 Collins and Gray 80 SIX GOTHIC SCHOLARSHIP AND CREATIVITY: THOMAS GRAY 81+ The Gray Walpole Friendship 83 "The Bard” 91 "The Fatal Sisters" 93 "The Descent of Odin" 100 IV SEVEN THE GREAT PRETENDER: JAMES MCPHERSON 1OU A Literary Artiface 105) "Oarthon" 111 EIGHT THE FIRST GOTHIC NOVEL: HORACE WALPOLE 118 The World that Welcomed Otranto 119 The Castle of Otranto 122 The Eternal Flame 127 NOTES 13/! BIBLIOGRAPHY 1U9 I CHAPTER ONE TOWARD A DEFINITION OF GOTHICISM 2 Horace Walpole’s attitude toward the Gothic past first found expression in his villa at Strawberry Hill, where Walpole, often hidden "behind the painted windows and beneath the papier mache fretted vault of his beloved Strawberry ... plunged ... deeply into a world of his own creation."^ It was at Strawberry in June of 1761+, with his head filled with Gothic story as he 2 later told his friend Cole, that Walpole had an exotic dream in which he imagined himself in an ancient castle, confronted by a gigantic hand in armor. That evening he sat down and began to write. For two months "he lived in a gothic phantasmagoria from which he emerged at last" with the first Gothic novel. With the publication of The Castle of Otranto in 176k, Horace Walpole initiated a new phase in English literary history. The immense popularity of his story led to countless imitations, and although his followers often added or substituted their own elements of Gothicism, they quite naturally borrowed Walpole’s more valuable properties. Chief among them was the castle, which, because of its association with the Middle Ages, has led literary critics to equate Gothicism with the medieval. Walpole’s reference to The Castle of Otranto as a "Gothic story" insured the asso­ ciation, so even though his avowed model was Shakespeare, his use of the medieval castle, coupled with the cavalcade of the mysterious knight in Chapter Three of Otranto, give credence to W. S. Lewis’ 3 assertion that Walpole wished, to widen his readers' knowledge of the Middle Ages.^ Clara Reeve, the first important Gothic novelist to follow Walpole, continued this emphasis on the Middle Ages in The Old English Baron (1778), "a Gothic story" and "a picture of Gothic 5 times and manners."-' Like Otranto, The Old English Baron sus­ tained a medieval atmosphere by the use of haunted castles, se­ cluded dungeons, lonely towers, knights in armor, and magic. "But to the reading public the outstanding feature . [of both The Castle of Otranto and The Old English Baron] . appears to have been, not their Gothic setting, but their supernatural inci­ dents This realization may explain why the later Gothic novel­ ists, especially Matthew Gregory Lewis and Charles Maturin, relied so heavily on the spectral side of Gothicism. Although the supernatural quality of Gothicism, as it evolved from Otranto, did come to be the dominant aspect of the genre, both supernatural and medieval aspects appeared in the first Gothic novel. At the same time the word "Gothic," though it was to come into vogue in the eighteenth century, generally had a rather pejorative meaning prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, for the term was synonymous with barbarism. Throughout the eighteenth century, then, the term "Gothic" can be viewed as having three particular meanings, and although there was a definite evolution of meaning, its three meanings were often related, if only because many in the Age of Johnson - so proud 4 of their triumphant retreat from what they deemed, the ludicrous superstitions of the seventeenth century - could view the "supernatural" aspects of the "Middle Ages" as indeed little more than "barharous;" Comprehending the equation of Gothicism with barbarism necessitates remembering the Augustan preference for the Classical while also understanding that "Gothic" was in the seventeenth and 7 eighteenth centuries extended to mean Germanic. The era of the Roman emperor Augustus, so envied by the leading Augustans, was historically a period of Roman-German strife. Barbarian tribes continually posed an awesome threat to the Roman empire at this time, and by 476, the year often cited as the date for the fall of the Roman Empire, the last of the Roman emperors was deposed and Rome had a German or Gothic ruler. A look at the definition of "Goth" in Samuel Johnson's cele­ brated Dictionary illustrates the equation of Gothicism with bar­ barism in the eighteenth-century mind. With his usual propinquity to Augustan prejudices Dr. Johnson noted a Goth to be "one not 8 civilized, one deficient in general knowledge, a barbarian." For most Augustans, as well as for Dr. Johnson, any association with the Gothic meant little else than "archaic, uncouth, ugly, barbarous."^ Of course the Augustans did not view the Gothic entirely from its earliest historical position; instead, the Augustans, as well as those of the middle and late eighteenth century, saw the Gothic mainly as an aspect of the Middle Ages. 5 Gothic architecture of this period, more than anything else, led them to their concept of the Gothic. To most Augustans, Gothic architecture was totally barbaric, barbaric in comparison to the elevated beauty of Renaissance or Classical art, and rather than view Gothic architecture as an outgrowth of the Romanesque, the Augustans saw it as the culmination of the anti-Romanesque tendencies in art. That the term emerged in the first instance from the French was perhaps additional reason for them to hold it in con- . .10 tempt. Of all the Augustans none was so unappreciative of the Gothic than Joseph Addison. In Spectator No. 62 Addison drew a typically priggish analogy between Gothic design and poets who have pretensions to wit: I. look upon -these writers as Goths in poetry, who like those in Architecture, not being able to come up to the beautiful Simplicity of the old Greeks arid Romans, have endeavored to supply its Place with all the Extravagancies of an irregular Fancy. Just as adamant in his view of the Gothic in later numbers, Addison wrote in Spectator No. 415: Let any one reflect on the Disposition of Mind he finds in himself at his first Entrance into the Pantheon at Rome, and how his Imagination is filled with something Great and Amazing; and, at the same time, consider how little, in proportion, he is affected with the Inside of a Gothick Gathederal tho’ it be five times larger than the other; which can arise from nothing else, but the Greatness of the Manner in the one, and the Meaness in the other,12 If we remember that Addison’s views were well respected and that his purpose in writing the daily Spectator was to reform 6 "English taste and manners by means of light banter and gentle persuasion,"^ it becomes apparent that Joseph Addison did much to retard acceptance of the Gothic by reaffirming the Augustan prejudice for the Classical, for simplicity and plainness rather than for ornamentation.