Literary Gothicism The Satanic/Byronic Hero

1. Literary GothicismThe Satanic/Byronic Hero Wwwnorton.com/nael/nto/romantic

2. Late 18th century Literary Gothic • Pleasurably terrifying experiences • Set in ancient castles, dungeons, secret passageways, graveyards • Flickering lamps • Screams, moans • Ghosts

3. Precursors to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein • Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto • Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho • Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk • Frankenstein inspired by the reading of German ghost stories

4. The Satanic Hero • Revised readings of Milton’s Paradise Lost • Only in the 19th century did readers begin to sympathize with Satan • See Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell • Shelley wrote that Satan rightly rebels against a tyrannical God. (But admits that Satan is flawed by the need for vengeance and pride)

5. Some famous Byronic heroes • Heathcliff in Bronte’s Wuthering Heights • Ahab in Melville’s Moby Dick • Victor Frankenstein in Shelley’s Frankenstein

6. Byron’s heroes (from “Lara” • “In him inexplicably mix’d appeared Much to be loved and hated, sought and feared” • “There was in him a vital scorn of all: As if the worst had fall’n which could befall He stood a stranger in this breathing world:, An erring spirit from another hurled; A thing of dark imaginings. . . “ “His madness was not of the head, but heart;”