Romantic Gothic by Angela Wright Dale Townshend
Author:Angela Wright,Dale Townshend
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
The Gothic Quixote
James Gillrayâs 1802 cartoon Tales of Wonder! depicts a group of ladies listening with rapt attention as one reads aloud from a copy of The Monk. The focal point of the image is a large woman with white hair who stares out from the centre of the composition, her features distorted comically in an expression of extreme horror (Fig. 10.1).
Figure 10.1âTales of Wonder! Print by James Gillray. Published by Hannah Humphrey in London, 1802. © Trustees of the British Museum.
As the parodies by R. S., Esq., Du Bois and Lucas suggest, however, much of the horror generated by Gothic literature appears to have come from moralists and conservative critics rather than from readers themselves. Concerns about Gothicâs harmful influence on susceptible readers found expression in a large class of Gothic parodies modelled after Cervantesâs Don Quixote (1605), Charlotte Lennoxâs The Female Quixote (1752) and other works in the anti-Romance tradition. âGothic Quixoteâ tales include Bullockâs Susanna; Eliza Parsonsâs Anecdotes of Two Well-Known Families (1798); Patrickâs More Ghosts! (1798); Mary Charltonâs Rosella; or, Modern Occurrences (1799); Maria Edgeworthâs âAngelinaâ (1801); Sarah Greenâs Romance Readers and Romance Writers (1810); Ircastrensisâs Love and Horror (1812); Barrettâs The Heroine (1813); Bellin de la Liborlièreâs The Hero (1813); and Austenâs Northanger Abbey (1818). In these parodies, depictions of deluded readers are used to expose Gothicâs lack of realism and simultaneously to dramatise a range of social concerns.
One of the earliest and best tales of Gothic Quixotism is The Hero (1799; English edition, 1817) by French author Bellin de la Liborlière. The âheroâ is Mr Dob, an addict of English Gothic novels, whose son stages a series of hair-raising adventures for him, which are taken directly from Dobâs favourite books. As previously noted, the work parodies the conventionality of Gothic narrative; however, it is also an example of class satire. Bellin de la Liborlière was an ousted aristocrat, and through his portrayal of the affluent tradesman, Dob, he satirises the oligarchy of nouveau riche that came into power during the French Revolution. The delight that Dob takes in fictional terrors suggests his complacency towards real atrocities. Literary satire and social satire intermingle in this work.
Ircastrensisâs Love and Horror features two Quixotes, Thomas Bailey and Annabella Tit, and targets two schools of Gothic, sensational and sentimental. Thomasâs adventures are taken from the pages of German Schauerroman. Moreover, like Scythrop Glowry in Nightmare Abbey, Thomas is a parody of the tormented heroes of the Sturm und Drang tradition. Ircastrensis uses his character to poke fun at what Peacock later termed the âmorbidities of modern literatureâ (Peacock 1818: 152). Annabellaâs adventures are taken from the Gothic romances of Radcliffe and Regina Maria Roche. Ircastrensis parodies Radcliffeâs female protagonists through Annabellaâs acute sensibility and artistic temperament. Among her other talents, Annabella is highly proficient at playing a musical instrument of âhigh antiquityâ â âthe Jewsâ harpâ: â[she] had acquired such skill in this instrument, that, if she played in the fields, the cows and horses crowded around herâ (Ircastrensis 2008: 27).
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