Parasites

"Gothic exists in relation to mainstream culture in the same way as a parasite does to its host"
Julian Wolfreys, Victorian Gothic

The idea of parasites and the parasitic was the topic of today's lesson. Most of the lesson was spent reading and summarizing from the article in which the quote was taken from. (if you missed the lesson, you can probably get the article from Mr Sadgrove).

The article discusses the period of Gothic as a genre, starting with the Castle of Otranto in 1764, and ending with Frankenstein in 1818. (Note the fact that none of the texts we are studying are from this period. Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, The Pardoner's Tale in the late 1300's and The Bloody Chamber in the 70's.)
Wolfreys states that after this period, the Gothic becomes more of a mode than a genre. The definition of mode in literature being:
an employed method or approach, identifiable within a written work

Wolfreys says that the 1840's and 1880's:
'is read implicitly as the time of the Gothic's subordination, translation and marginalization.'
Because of this, Victorian (1837-1901) Gothic is an 'evacuated' genre, as it is marginalized.

Wolfreys goes on to discuss the themes within Gothic literature (incest, homosexuality etc.) stating that the Gothic is 'the articulation of the human psyche'
Furthermore, Wolfreys quotes critics such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, David Punter, and Robert Miles to back up his point that the Gothic takes the fears of contemporary society, and reconstitutes it into a literary form. He rounds off with a discussion (for want of a better word) of the heterogeneity of the Gothic, as it is hard to stick it to a discernible period.
The article ends with the statement:
'It is as if the phantoms of the gothic arrive so as to illuminate in encrypted form the Victorians to themselves'