Transgression, Writing and Violence in Romantic Gothic Fiction, 1794-1820

Citation

Townshend D (1997) Transgression, Writing and Violence in Romantic Gothic Fiction, 1794-1820. Journal of Literary Studies, 13 (1-2), pp. 151-182. https://doi.org/10.1080/02564719708530166

Abstract
This article is divided into three sections. Section one, in a self‐conscious act of critical aggression, approaches a range of Gothic narratives, including Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho [1794](1980), Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk [1796](1980), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus [1818](1980) and Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer [1820](1989) with the metaphysical distinction between "Nature" and "Culture" at hand. Such an endeavour reveals the extent to which Romantic Gothic fiction characteristically involves the central narrative dynamic of an Edenic transgression and subsequent fall from the hallowed bounds of nature into the depraved realms of cultural engagement. Section two, however, in seeking to deconstruct this Edenic metaphor at work in the texts, proceeds to demonstrate the play of textuality operative in Gothic invocations of the Nature:Culture binary opposition. The absolute conceptual differences between the two states upon which the texts' central narrative dynamic rests is underwritten by the deconstructive play of écriture. Through an application of the metaphors of violence and aggression employed by Derrida across his oeuvre, section three of this paper seeks to provide a rereading of Gothic violence as any narrative attempt to suppress the text of différence at work ‐ or play ‐ in the texts at hand.

Journal
Journal of Literary Studies: Volume 13, Issue 1-2