Tag: The hunchback of notre-dame

Carnival Celebrations in Gothic Literature

It’s Carnival season in the Catholic liturgical year—a time for wild celebration and indulging in excess before the restrictions and solemnity of Lent. The holiday is celebrated mainly in regions with large Catholic populations, including parts of Western Europe and the Americas, but historically it has been especially associated with Italy. Celebrations usually involve parades, colorful costumes, extravagant parties, and indulgent foods and beverages. Though ostensibly a time of joy and merriment, this boisterous atmosphere can also be disorienting, overwhelming, and even frightening, and the holiday’s associations with disguise and mischief create an excellent opportunity for dastardly plots and misdirection. This—combined with Gothic literature’s love/hate relationship with all things Catholic—makes the frenetic festivities of Carnival the perfect backdrop. Below are just a few examples of works of Gothic literature that take place during Carnival or Carnival-like celebrations:

Carnival mask from Venice. Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash

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Gothic Vocab: The Grotesque

Perhaps more so than the other vocabulary words we’ve discussed thus far (the sublime and the uncanny), “grotesque” is a term you’re just as likely to hear thrown about in casual conversation as in academic discourse on Gothic literature. We might use it to describe anything that’s bizarre, incongruous, unnatural, or gross. But where does it come from, and what does it mean in a literary context? Much like the word “Gothic” itself, grotesque has a convoluted and roundabout history that covers a wide range of meanings and takes us back to ancient times. Continue reading Gothic Vocab: The Grotesque

Gothic Tropes: Corrupted Clergy

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned”—But what if the one who is supposed to absolve you is even more guilty? This is an idea explored in quite some depth and from a variety of angles throughout Gothic literature. The Gothic has had a very complicated relationship with religion, and Christianity in particular, from its earliest days. Sincere religious belief is often a virtue of the best Gothic heroes and heroines. But some of the genre’s most debased villains are those who wear the cloth of the Church. Early Gothic novels were highly critical of the horrors committed in the name of religion during the Spanish Inquisition, and these works also reflect Protestant and Anglican fears around Catholicism. But even the most obvious anti-Catholic caricatures were often a bit more nuanced, as many authors relied on the acceptable depiction of evil Catholic clergy to more subtly critique the overreach of religious authorities within their own communities. And no sect is safe! You’ll find dangers in any denomination in later works of Gothic literature. Let’s take a look at how corrupted clergymen (and a few women!) have crept through these novels.

Screen-shot of Frollo from Disney's Hunchback

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French and German Gothic

I’ve spoken many times on this blog about how the Gothic genre originated in England with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, and I’ve gone on to enumerate many other early English writers of the Gothic, as well as several American authors that followed later on. But the Gothic was not limited to the English-speaking world. In fact, many of the early and influential pieces of Gothic literature originated in Continental Europe—specifically in Germany and France. Below, I’ve listed a few seminal works to take a broad look at the Gothic tradition in these two countries: Continue reading French and German Gothic