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Conventions of GothicLiterature,

A list, by RP with assistance from WMB

Gothic Characters: Helpless, victimised woman, virtuous, curious Femme fatale Useless hero insipidity Comic characters, often working class Loyal servants Doppelgangers Narrator Dead parents No-one knows the whole truth

Gothic Villains can be Pure evil Strangely attractive Satanic (in the Miltonic sense) Anti-heroes Personifying a particular attribute

Techniques: Unreliable or multiple narrative voices Dramatic irony only reader knows whole truth Verisimilitude the found papers Framing devices Fakery the artful forgery Its always been about reviving something Many voices telling the story Unfinished story the gothic fragment Heavily symbolic, very metaphorical writing

Gothic Settings Wild sublime: Untamed nature seas, mountains Pantheism universal deity of Nature Evocative of the past decay can be physical and / or moral Rural simplicity (cottages and hovels) safe havens Liminal spaces mental asylums Labyrinths Caves Locked spaces Underground Cities Gotham city

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Lawlessness The edges of the map Blurred boundaries

Motifs: Blood Bells Things suggesting secrecy Penetrations Death Corruption Seven deadly sins Encounters between life/death, past/present Night Pathetic fallacy Separation Usurpation Incest Danger Addiction Uncertainty Sanity/insanity Religious imagery Loneliness Guilt/hell as internal state Freaks Altered states TRANSGRESSION the breaking and confirmation of boundaries Victimisation Modernity/atavism Monstrosity