MDDM Ch. 12 Gothickal Scribblers Part Two

[jbor]

johnbonbailey at hotmail.com wrote:

> Thing is
the ‘first’ gothic novel is usually considered to be The Castle of
> Otranto, and it was published in 1765. We’re in about 1761 or so here,
> aren’t we? So
.gothic scribbling doesn’t yet exist, let alone have a name,
> let alone be known by a lunar-tic on a remote island, right?

Tobias Smollett's _Ferdinand Count Fathom_ came out in 1753, and there were
early "Gothic" short stories and fragments (and plays) as well as the
novels. It would have been a very current literary phenomenon and there was
no doubt quite a buzz about the genre in the late 1750s and early 1760s,
just as Pynchon depicts it in this scene (117-8). There's a good Gothic
fiction site (plus bibliography) here:

http://members.aol.com/franzpoet/intro.html

http://members.aol.com/franzpoet/gothicres.html

http://members.aol.com/gothlit/titlesbyyears.html#1753

http://members.aol.com/gothlit/biblio.html

There was also a school of graveyard poetry in the first half of the 18th C.
which had a great influence on the advent of English Gothic fiction:

http://members.aol.com/iamudolpho/graveyard.html

Some of the best-known examples:

Thomas Parnell's 'Night-Piece on Death' (1722)

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/parnell3b.html

Edward Young's 'Night Thoughts' (1742)

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/young3b.html

Robert Blair's 'The Grave' (1743)

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/blair1b.html

Some commentators also include Thomas Gray's famous 'Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard' (1751), though it's not really a typical specimen of the
genre.

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/gray4.html

Either way, it's a great pome.

best