Amazing Minds
P. 174/176
ROMANTIC FICTION
At the beginning of the 19th century the
novel was a solid and stable literary
genre founded on a respectable tradition.
The three main trends of the Romantic
novel were:
•Gothic Novel - closely linked to the
concept of “the sublime” and contained
gloomy elements and murders.
•Novel of Manners - Jane Austen.
•Novel of Purpose - Mary Shelley.
•Historical Novel - Walter Scott.
The novels of the Romantic Age had some
common traits, which differentiated
them from the novel of the past:
•Deeper psychological analysis of the
characters.
•Dialogues to express the personality.
•Prose to tackle important social issues
and to explore the relationship
between the social classes.
The Gothic Novel
The term gothic refers to the
architectural style of the Middle Ages,
which was greatly admired in the 18th
century.
18th-century architects and artists tried
to re-evaluate the importance of the
irrational part of the human mind, the
fantastic and the supernatural as
opposed to reason.
In literature the “gothic revival” came to
be associated with tales, short stories
and novels revolving around intrigues,
treasons, murderous acts and
supernatural apparitions.
The first novel classified as gothic was
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
and another example is Ann Radcliffe’s
The Mysteries of Udolpho.
With their insistence on producing strong
and contrasting emotions in readers,
gothic novel were linked to the aesthetic
of the sublime.
One of the authors who was most
influenced by the tradition of the Gothic
novel was Edgar Allan Poe, whose short
stories explored the dark sides of the
human mind and focused on different
themes such as horror, mystery and the
supernatural.
The Novel of Manners and Jane Austen
Jane Austen was the author of a series
of universal masterpieces of English
literature such as Pride and Prejudice
(1813).
Her novels revived the tradition of the
comedy of manners in prose: her stories
focused on a limited set of characters
who interacted with one another in
provincial England.
Her novels are sometimes called “novels
of manners”. They tackled themes such as
the contrast between individual freedom
and social conventions, the relationship
between marriage and love, and
friendship. Another characteristic of
Austen’s works was the subtle irony that
characterised her writing style.
The result was a clever analysis of human
characters, of the limits imposed by
social conventions on feelings, and of the
conditions of the life of women.
The novel of purpose and Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or the
Modern Prometheus. It is a Romantic
rewriting of the Classical myth of
Prometheus, the Titan who was punished
by Zeus after sharing the gift of fire
with men.
The myth became the story of a
scientist, Dr. Frankenstein, who managed
to create artificial life.
Shelley’s novel used lots of elements
taken from the tradition of Gothic novels,
but it also anticipated many of the trends
of what would become know as science
fiction and horror fiction.
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