Medievalism in the Medieval: Gothic Elements in Old English Literature
By Kent M. Pettit
Master’s Thesis, Valdosta State University, 2013
Abstract: The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic genre of literature is difficult to define. In reality, the genre is a set of tropes rather than a clearly articulated literary system. Interestingly, these Gothic elements are also apparent in several works in the Old English poetic tradition. Though these poems likely date some 800 years before the rise of the Gothic, a proto-Gothic impulse runs through Beowulf, Guthlac A, Andreas, and Juliana. This study intends to draws parallels between the classic Gothic elements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and these works of Old English literature. An examination of the elements common to both is centered in setting, villains, victims, and supernatural/superhuman rescuing agents. Extensive research has been done in AngloSaxon history and culture in order to understand the influences behind the early medieval literary works at hand. In addition, thorough research into ancient and medieval saints’ lives, particularly the hermitic warrior tradition, has been carried out to trace the connection between the liminality and monstrous aspects of this tradition and the Gothic. Special attention has also been given to the female saints’ lives tradition, linking patriarchal and sadistic oppressors to Gothic villains. Although definition is elusive, a definition of the Gothic has also been addressed. Through close readings of several key texts, this discussion attempts to reveal the connections between literature of vastly different times and cultural situations. The shared Gothic tropes suggest a connection, but the juxtapositions of radically different cultures both in the early medieval period and the Gothic/Romantic period may explain equally common impulses.
Introduction: Ann Radcliffe, perhaps the most representative author of the late eighteenthcentury Gothic novel, writes in The Mysteries of Udolpho:
Emily gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle, which she understood to be Montoni’s; for, though it was now lighted up by the setting sun, the Gothic greatness of its features, and its mouldering walls of dark-gray stone, rendered it a gloomy and sublime object. As she gazed, the light died away on its walls, leaving a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and deeper as the thin vapor crept up the mountain, while the battlements above were still tipt with splendor. From those, too, the rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was invested with the solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all who dared to invade its solitary reign. As the twilight deepened, its features became more awful in obscurity; and Emily continued to gaze, till its clustering towers were alone seen rising over the tops of the woods, beneath whose thick shade the carriages soon after began to ascend.
In this passage, Radcliffe provides a textbook example of how many late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writers associated the Gothic with widely recognized features of medieval literature and culture. Montoni’s imposing castle and its “Gothic greatness,” complete with the wear and tear of its dark stone appearance, the dark gloominess of the landscape, mountains, crags, battlements, and towers, elicit thoughts of the castles of Arthurian romances. The dark landscape and the forbidding, vaporous mountains in the distance call to mind the misty moors and mysterious nights in Beowulf. However, all of these identifiable medieval tropes were part of a bygone age by Radcliffe’s time. The radical changes of the early modern period and the subsequent Age of Enlightenment had long swept away from European society many of the old medieval worldviews and superstitions, at least in educated or urbanized circles. Nevertheless, Radcliffe and other Gothic writers persisted in connecting their own genre to their romanticized notion of the medieval. Was Gothic medievalism an accurate portrayal of medieval cultural? For the most part, it was not. As Fred Botting points out, Gothic ideas of the medieval have either few or distorted connections to the actual Middle Ages.
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