Gothic passage crib sheet
Intro:
Place it in its gothic period/ context of the time
What is happening in the text?
Why is it gothic?
Relate to other gothic texts
Perspective/ narrator:
o 1st – intimate, experience their emotions, subjective, potentially untrustworthy
o 3rd – objective, voyeuristic, detached, intended audience
o Omnipotent – objective, reliable
o Fragmented – disorientating, ambiguous
o Past – distorted, unreliable, detached, liminal
o Present – confrontational, close proximity increases terror, vulnerability
o Exaggerated/ complex/ subtle/ archaic
Setting:
Forbidden
Decadent
Macabre/ morbid
Isolated/ alienating
Desolate / decaying
Sublime/ Wilderness
Familiar
Domestic
Urban
Foreign
Grandeur/ decadent
Archaic
Claustrophobic / entrapment/ emprisoning
Expansive/ immense
Gloomy
Dark
Disorientating/ labyrinth
Death
Gothic Tropes:
o Imagined or realistic threats (psychological/ physical)
o Terror (activates the mind and the imagination allowing it to overcome and even transcend its
fears and doubts, the subject can move from passivity to activity)
o Horror (freezes the senses the mind rendering it passive)
o Transgression/ taboo
o Desires
o Power
o Boundaries
Intro:
Place it in its gothic period/ context of the time
What is happening in the text?
Why is it gothic?
Relate to other gothic texts
Perspective/ narrator:
o 1st – intimate, experience their emotions, subjective, potentially untrustworthy
o 3rd – objective, voyeuristic, detached, intended audience
o Omnipotent – objective, reliable
o Fragmented – disorientating, ambiguous
o Past – distorted, unreliable, detached, liminal
o Present – confrontational, close proximity increases terror, vulnerability
o Exaggerated/ complex/ subtle/ archaic
Setting:
Forbidden
Decadent
Macabre/ morbid
Isolated/ alienating
Desolate / decaying
Sublime/ Wilderness
Familiar
Domestic
Urban
Foreign
Grandeur/ decadent
Archaic
Claustrophobic / entrapment/ emprisoning
Expansive/ immense
Gloomy
Dark
Disorientating/ labyrinth
Death
Gothic Tropes:
o Imagined or realistic threats (psychological/ physical)
o Terror (activates the mind and the imagination allowing it to overcome and even transcend its
fears and doubts, the subject can move from passivity to activity)
o Horror (freezes the senses the mind rendering it passive)
o Transgression/ taboo
o Desires
o Power
o Boundaries
