Gothic Literature

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Plato's understanding of the form and function of art can help us to situate the epistemological stance of Gothic Victorian literature - a set of literary endeavors that was also deeply committed to the mimetic, although not precisely in the way that Plato outlined. It looks at how the world of Victorian writers and readers was one whose epistemological and physical borders were each day being pushed further back.

From the Paper:

"We may now turn to the ways in which the world of the 19th-century Gothic novel confirmed (even if in many cases unknowingly) to the precepts laid down by Plato. The world of 19th England was one in flux, in which a number of traditional certainties had been cast aside. Society was becoming once and forever unhinged from its traditional agrarian base, and in this process people were losing the compass points that had guided their ancestors for generations. The world for the resident of the Victorian era was at once vaster and more frightening, more full of discoveries to be made than it had been since the Age of Exploration."

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• Analytical Essay # 65709 : "The Vampire and Gothic Literature"

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