Critical Essay | James M. Keech

James M. Keech

SOURCE: "The Survival of the Gothic Response," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer, 1974, pp. 130-44.

In the following essay, Keech defines the Gothic novel in terms of its effect—the ability to evoke "fear characterized by foreboding and intensity"—and extends the Gothic genre to include George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and other works which reflect the modern sense of individual "impotence in a fearfully incomprehensible world."

Traditionally, the Gothic novel has been regarded as a work defined by its common elements, a sort of formula novel employing standard atmospheric trappings and stereotyped characters. Conceptually, it has meant a set of stock devices used to evoke terror and horror: ruined castles and abbeys, dank dungeons, gloomy tyrants, mad monks, imperiled maidens, secret chambers, haunted galleries, creaking doors, mysterious portraits, ghosts, "skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms." Scholars, such as Tompkins, Summers, and Varma, have divided it into types:...
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