Horace Walpole is the man most often credited with the creation of the 'Gothic' literary convention. It would probably be more accurate to say that he initiated the use of the term 'Gothic' and went on to promote it, even going to such a length as building his own characteristically Gothic villa - Strawberry Hill. A figure as eccentric and mysterious as any hero portrayed in the Gothic genre itself, Walpole first published The Castle of Otranto in 1764 under an assumed identity (Onuphrio Muralto, as translated by 'William Marshall, Gent'), and upon its reception it was thought to be a translation of a medieval manuscript. It seems ironic that a literature dependent on (among other things) ambivalence, distortion and a lack of reliable verification should be considered born amidst such intriguing circumstances. The truth is that Walpole, in giving The Castle of Otranto the subtitle A Gothic Tale, had facilitated a descriptive term for a literary style that had been conceived of long before the publication of his 'masterpiece'.

Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) was in fact the first eighteenth-century work to propose terror as a subject for fiction and, as David Punter points out in The Literature of Terror, had more in common with the literature that was to appear under the banner of Gothic after The Castle of Otranto: "...Fathom and the works of Radcliffe and Lewis are dark books, heavy books, where Otranto is light and airy, a fairy-tale rather than a nightmare, even when it strives for the horrific" . Punter seems to allude to the idea that Walpole's book has an intrinsic link to the fantastic realm of dreams, and rightly so. The Castle of Otranto was written in the relatively short period of three months, the impetus for Walpole's burst of creativity being a dream in which he saw a gigantic hand in armor at the uppermost banister of a staircase. It was this feverish burst of inspiration that led Andre Breton, after reading a letter from Horace Walpole to William Cole (dated 9 March 1765) to assert that The Castle of Otranto "...the future model of so many others,...must be put to the credit of dreams and the employment of automatic writing" . Whatever the source of the Gothic; whose ideas have been linked to such diverse backgrounds as early 'graveyard' poetry and Jacobean drama; the period in which it is usually designated to have been most prolific (1760s - 1820s) is marked by a variety of conditions which lend further meaning to its inception.

To the eighteenth-century reader the term 'Gothic' conjured it's significance from "...an almost unpredictable intersection of religious belief, of aesthetic taste and political inclination" . It had a connotative aura of primitivism and barbarism about it which made it's reception as anything other than a crude, old-fashioned, cheap thrill amongst the intellectual community hard to overcome. However, despite these prejudices Gothic soon became popular, particularly among middle class women (who were most likely the original consumers who went on to make Gothic so common a taste). A modern development of legendry, ballads, folk memories and fairy tales, Gothic became a convention in which the public could still savor sentimentality and romance. The appeal of the Gothic was most likely due to the fact that it represented an avenue within which a great deal of emotional and passionate experience could be indulged. The Age of Enlightenment had removed mystery from the world in an attempt to assert the pure immanence of positivism and reason, and ensure that nothing remained on the outside of what was 'known' - for the 'unknown' is a source of greatest fear. Passion and emotion was therefore delineated as belonging to that territory outside what could be interpreted and understood, and whatever could not be assimilated was the enemy of reason. This desire, mixed with the need to aesthetically express the revolutionary cauldron of Europe, and the fears of the age, means that Gothic became the zeitgeist of its time. Devendra P. Varma tells us that "[Gothic literature] is the most characteristic literary expression of the orgy of mental and emotional excitement that accompanied the French Revolution and grew out of the Industrialization of Britain" . Similarly, the Marquis de Sade comments that Gothic became "the indispensable fruit of the revolutionary upheaval to which the whole of Europe was sensitive" . Quite obviously there were domains of human experience which did not appear to be in accordance with rational criteria. It can therefore be said that the convention was born of an age seeking to once more touch base with the more spiritual aspect of man. This claim has also been made for Romanticism, a genre which lies close to the core of the Gothic tradition in literature.

While demonstrating many individual characteristics, Gothic also dwells within the spheres of not only Romanticism as a genre, but Surrealism, Sentimentalism and the notion of the Sublime. This is most likely due to the fact that the Gothic, like these other classifications of literature, recognizes the existence of the unconscious world. It seeks to access what has been repressed, give some form to these elements and then mix the resultant images with those of the conscious. Indeed, Gothic has many times over been considered as an early form of psychology in that it seeks to explore the mind, albeit the darker side of it. Similarly "...[s]entimental novels tend to confine themselves and their 'teachings' to inner states. They are more concerned with psychology than society" . It could only plumb the unconscious by putting itself in direct opposition to what may be seen as an example of Augustanism. The Augustans looked back on a past age seen as analogous to theirs, in which the barbarians were at the gates of a golden city. Augustanism sought to build barricades to protect civilization as they saw it - being a conservative and rational existence - from the irrational and fearsome presence of the inexplicable. However, literature such as that produced by Gothic writers provided further pressure on the already struggling literary establishment, until something gave and the walls came tumbling down. But new walls are always built, and territory is always mapped out - the battle begins anew. Every age has fear of that which lies outside what it can rationally account for. It is illustrations like this that provide examples of the essential conflict present within Gothic literature - the confrontation of the closed space with whatever lies beyond the border established to protect it. However, Gothic (a literature wrought with paradox) has become an established convention in itself, having many characteristics common to novels which have since been written in the tradition.

One of these characteristics is the use of archaic settings in an attempt to recapture history. We find that the setting for the Gothic is usually reminiscent of the medieval, or even of that same architectural period which shares the title Gothic. G. R. Thompson, in 'A Dark Romanticism: In Quest of a Gothic Monomyth' provides what I consider the best explanation for this phenomenon. He suggests that in using the icons of a past age we are attempting to "..bring graphic proof to religious claims and religious significance to formalist observations". In applying a fascination with the stark duality present in the medieval, we are provided with a means of employing the dialectical. We can use medieval motifs to explore the supposed duality of man and his existence. A relic of both religious influence and Cartesian philosophy, dialecticism is a vital component of Gothic fiction. "This duality finds expression, on the one hand, in the evocation of the transcendent, upward thrust of Gothic cathedrals and in the 'romances' of idealized knights in quest of the Holy Grail; and, on the other hand, in the vision of the dark night of the soul and the nightmare terror of demons Satan sent from hell to drag men down".

Another important characteristic is Gothic's use of the terrifying. This is predominantly because fear is one of the most effective tools for undermining the dictates of reason. Not only does it provoke a primitive, irrational response but it invokes that fear which is most powerfully repressed in the individual - what society deems as taboo. By direct stylistic manipulation of the taboo; with those areas of socio-psychological life which offend; Gothic literature seeks to upset the equilibrium. Or, more importantly, Gothic fiction seeks to further explore the boundaries of the human by addressing the 'uncanny' directly - that which lies beyond those borders. By describing the terrifying and bringing it to life, Gothic literature acknowledges the essential truth that human existence is not a linear experience, but also composed of moments for which we can only use the Gothic's extensive language of (ever-variable) metaphor and symbolism. The increasingly complex narrative structure of the Gothic (which may have contributed to the historical development of 'plot' in novels) must incorporate a sense of 'narrative doubt' - what Coleridge referred to as a "willing suspension of disbelief" - in order to contain the terrifying. It was this struggle to avoid the language of the everyday, the realist, that led to the melodramatics characteristic of much Gothic fiction. Ornateness, violent exclamation and hyperbole were necessary to succeed in creating what Punter refers to as a "real simulation of linguistic archaism".

Other characteristics fed into the Gothic convention in literature, among them: alienation, barbarity, paranoia, madness, the complexity of verification for any inexplicable experience, promotion of a general and moral ambivalence, etc. Most of these features are characteristic of Gothics shift toward the intensely psychological. The Gothic, often conceived of as a literature of dreams, came to be a mirror in which the human mind was reflected (often in a distorted fashion). The supernatural figures so common in Gothic literature are themselves dark reflections of man's deeper unconscious; a hellish psychology that arose from over a century of philosophical speculation on the subject. As David Punter states, "...stasis is dependent on controlling that man within, whether that be the id, the threat of the beast, or the bones of the unburied past" . However, the danger is that the beast grows stronger with every increased effort to keep it under control. Categorization of two different poles in itself seeks to fortify the walls of the closed world against invasion from the irrational. The dialectical oppositions of Gothic create often starkly differentiated absolutes of good and evil. Or rather, they did. More and more we find that modern Gothic fiction tends to anthropormorphize what has traditionally been seen as inhuman, unnatural and demonic. No longer is there such a stark contrast as Van Helsing and Dracula, for nowadays the vampire is almost as human as you or I. This shift can been seen as a progressive combination of the two extremes which once dominated human consciousness - a realization in part that we may not be so different from these perverse reflections, which are essentially drawn from our own nature as it is.

Peter B. Messent acknowledges that "[a]mbiguities of power lie very much at the heart of this fiction" . A struggle to come to grips with what darkness lies inside of us; that age-old battle between good and evil which is typified by the power struggle between God and the Devil; but which for us becomes a conflict between stability, balance, and sanity with the unknown, unstable and insane. One way to empower 'ourselves' is the concept of the Faustian pact, or compact with the Devil, which underlies many Gothic themes. Vampirism is seen as a variation on the theme of the dark pact, and Frankenstein's quest for knowledge can hardly be seen as morally legitimate. The desire is to attempt an inquiry into the unknown and/or forbidden - G. R. Thompson's 'demonic-quest romance'. We seek to explore beyond the closed world of the self but find that we are without the ability to do so. We rely upon the supernatural reflection of self to pursue the ultimate truths which lie beyond our 'natural' space - the demon, the vampire, the werewolf, the ghost.

In 'The Closed Space', Manuel Aguirre points out that the "...world is defined in horror literature as space and, furthermore, as a closed space" . Like Punter, he provides one of the most truly informative explorations of the Gothic as an example of potent human symbolism. Aguirre suggests that as inhabitants of this closed space we long for contact with the Other - what he terms (as others have done) the 'Numinous'. S. L. Varnado provides the best elucidation for the meaning of this term and its source in 'The Idea of the Numinous in Gothic Literature' . The late German theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto used the term (taken from the Latin numen - a god or power) in his major work, The Idea of the Holy (1917), to describe man's fear, wonder and delight at being confronted with the divine. Aguirre uses it similarly to signify that which is non-human, alien or Other. He therefore frames a basic thematic unity within Gothic literature as being a "confrontation between the Closed Space and a numinous Enemy" . In positing my own research topic I would not agree with Aguirre's use of the word 'enemy' in relation to these darker aspects of ourselves, especially in light of the fact that these 'Dark Numen' are the key to fulfilling a particular goal. Aguirre, in talking of Faustus, states that the initial goal was a "...recovery of the lost numinous element that constitutes the mind's rightful dominion. He does not primarily try to usurp what belongs to God but to heal a rift in his own human nature; not to be more, but to be himself" . In investigating how the supernatural (numinous) characters used in the Gothic work of Anne Rice and Whitley Strieber in particular seek to heal this rift and explore new territory beyond imposed borders I hope to highlight the importance of these 'Dark Numen'. Specifically, I believe that this investigation would be most effectively accomplished through the 'schizoanalytic' philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as well as the notion of the Simulacra that has been borne from Jean Baudrillard's explorations of human desire and the creation of the double. Not only would such research make an original contribution to existing knowledge but would develop the existing characteristics of the Gothic convention. Both bodies of philosophical work acknowledge that a mapped, or 'striated' space exists - Aguirre's 'Closed Space'. Gothic's supernatural characters are essentially creatures borne from our desire to make contact with the numinous beyond that map, and thereby explore the world which exists beyond the 'Closed Space' of everyday existence.

Bibliography

Aguirre, Manuel (1990), The Closed Space: Horror literature and western symbolism, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Jackson, Rosemary (1981), Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, Routledge, London.
MacAndrew, Elizabeth (1979), The Gothic Tradition in Fiction, Columbia University Press, New York.
Messent, Peter B. (ed.) (1981), Literature of the Occult: A collection of critical essays, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey.
Punter, David (1980), The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day, Longman, London.
Punter, David (1985), The Hidden Script: Writing and the Unconscious, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Sage, Victor (ed.) (1990), The Gothick Novel: A Casebook, MacMillan, London.