Gothic Discourse: in the cracks of reason (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

The gothic lives in the cracks of Reason. A moment of bewilderment, a split second of disorientation that transports us outside recognisable boundaries. Textually, it is presented as a rhetorical effect which challenges the reader`s epistemological assurances. Order might immediately be called in again, by means of authorial explanation, bringing the readers to their senses and making the eerie instant recoil back to its crack. But the gothic will remain as a seed of uncertainty lodged in the foundation of Reason ready to stem again, or perhaps, wedge its way in deeper bringing the whole building down.

From this angle, the gothic constitutes a response to a disquietude; a reaction that takes place when we are pushed beyond familiar cultural limits. It is curious to note how this gothic cultural uneasiness frequently unfolds into political matters and questions of national identity. As a discourse the gothic began with English novelists in the 18th century, encompassing an answer to the anxiety caused by the French Revolution across the channel. With the proliferation of the novel in the 19th and 20th centuries, gothic images and conventions found their way around the world and, in the 21st century, they still linger on strongly in books and in the cinema. Although the gothic discourse is a trans-cultural and trans-historical phenomenon, its significance can only be recognised in a defined space and time. That is to say, the meanings and implications of these conventions have to be culturally and historically observed.

Gothic Villains (Daniel Serravalle de Sá , 2005)

As the setting of gothic novels is rarely Britain, the portraiture of Nature in them is mainly oriented by foreign geography. Displacing anxieties in time and space was a way of projecting on to the ‘other’, issues the Protestant tradition[1] did not want to approach in its own territory. From the margins of an Enlightenment culture, dramatising conflicts and uncertainties in the face of a fast-changing social and economic world, gothic became the standard vehicle for authors to address the aesthetic and political questions raised by the events of 1789 in France. British novelists re-interpreted the ghost of the 1688 revolution through the French Revolution, transferring their anxieties to distant countries and past times, setting their horror stories predominantly in Italy, and also in France and in Spain.

The development of capitalism, in this period of internal realignment and external revolution, would explain the success of this fiction which questions the constitution of the ‘real’, making way for a blend of fear and attraction, anxiety and desire, which seem to have characterised the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. The gothic novel exposes its ambivalences, by the intention of consolidating bourgeois values, such as domesticity, sentiment, virtue and family; alongside a fascination for medieval architecture, customs and values. Expressing admiration for a feudal world which was at the same time a source of tyranny, barbarism, and autocracy; lead to the creation of cruel and malevolent villains, who were either aristocrats or religious elements.

The events that take place in gothic novels are frequently depicted in an ironic manner. Outbursts against the inequities of overseas nations were a familiar cliché for the 18th century British reader. In this light, gothic novels can be considered novels of nationality, conveyed through the notion of ‘otherness’ in the story which contrasted with the ‘English’ beliefs. The gothic obsession with the Catholic clergy and aristocracy as repositories of evil represents the danger from the outside. By doing that, novelists helped to consolidate a national identity by creating a dichotomy between the multitude of British readers and the Continental, Catholic and often infamous characters. “Your picture is complete’, said he, ‘and I cannot but admire the facility with which you have classed the monks together with banditti” (The Italian, p.50) says the wicked friar Schedoni, outwitting the young hero Vivaldi and relativising the certainties. Only gothic villains are capable of great evil and yet maintain certain majesty of demeanour. In Northanger Abbey (1818), Jane Austen points out the limits of these conventions by reinscribing a parodical gothic novel in her own idiosyncratic form. She exposes the structure of gothic novels by satirising their stereotypical aspects.[2]

The reader usually takes sides from the very first description, in which they are made complicit with an ideological point of view. Frequently older and more experienced than the hero and heroine (as those Romanic nations were in relation to Britain), the villain’s physical complexion is described as dark, and usually there is something disturbing or magnetic about him. Drawing attention to the features is a way of proposing contrast with the ‘fair’ English type. This initial cue serves as a hook to introduce a whole national statement, where the narrator will make use of images and linguistic subtleties to create a rapport with the readers. The appearance of the padre Ambrosio in The Monk (1796)[3] exemplifies:

He was a Man of noble port and commanding presence. His stature was lofty, and his features uncommonly handsome. His Nose was aquiline, his eyes large black and sparkling, and his dark brows almost joined together. His complexion was of a deep but clear Brown; Study and watching had entirely deprived his cheek of colour. Tranquillity reigned upon his smooth unwrinkled forehead; and Content, expressed upon every feature, seemed to announce the Man equally unacquainted with cares and crimes.
(The Monk, vol. I, chapter I, pp. 8-9)

Ambrosio personifies the Mediterranean physical stereotype, although he is young and rather inexperienced at this point in the novel, all his wickedness will soon show through. His respectable public persona contrasts with his depraved intimacy. The villain’s corruption, allied with his obsessive fiery nature, inclined to outbreaks of rage, is a constant in almost all gothic novels. In spite of the antagonists’ studied self-control, they are naturally aggressive and their untamed ardour will often breakthrough the veneer of their composed appearance, taking them from the ‘summit of exultation to the abyss of despondency’ (The Romance of the Forest, p.317), note the metaphor of the landscape here. The propensity for violence, immorality and general tantrums by the villain underpins a central idea in the construct of ‘otherness’ that characterises the gothic. The way these novels debate alterity and differences is by demonising the other. Depicting the ‘other’ in such a sinful manner has implications. It leads readers to believe in, or at least entertain the idea of a general ‘righteousness’ on behalf of the British nation, in which ‘virtue’ is a code for ‘civilisation’. In that light, gothic novels contributed to the construction of the British national and institutional identity. Ultimately, they address the question of nationality by means of promoting racial, religious, cultural and institutional distinctions.

These antagonists will fulfil their cultural role. As they are expected to be, villains are shifty characters, a mark of their cunning. Their behaviour and discourse will mould itself to suit the occasion. Gothic antagonists will rely on intimidation, trickery, and even flattery to achieve their aims. Spurred by deceitfulness Schedoni adopts a suave tone with the Marchesa di Vivaldi.

‘To what do you allude, righteous father’ enquired the astonished Marchesa; ‘what indignity, what impiety has my son to answer for? I entreat you will speak explicitly, that I may prove I can lose the mother in the strict severity of the judge.’
‘That is spoken with the grandeur of sentiment, which has always distinguished you, my daughter! Strong minds perceive that justice is the highest of the moral attributes, mercy is only the favourite of weak ones’
(The Italian, vol. I, chapter X, p. 111)

This scene shows how Schedoni appropriates the sentimental jargon of the heroine and uses it for his own benefit. His rhetorical mastery induces the Marchesa to side with him. On the narrative level, Schedoni’s sudden mockery of the hero and heroine’s naiveté reveals Radcliffe’s command of her writing. In these moments, she is exposing her structure with this teasing, showing that ‘moral attributes’ are a pose rather than a genuine feeling. In the villain, this kind of self-interested wickedness is largely linked to the study of the history of the Venetian Serenissima Republica, then an archetypal example of oligarchic despotism outside the Far East.[4] The Venetian ‘republic’ was based on slavery, midwifery of finances and totalitarism. To a certain extent gothic novelists constructed this ‘other’ by capitalising on notions of political expediency stemming from the trade practices of Venice. Texts like Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513) also contributed to this stereotyping of Italians, frequently represented as shady and deceitful people. Shakespeare also used the theme in Othello, the Moor of Venice (16o1) and the idea lingered at least as far as Schiller’s ‘gothic’ re-reading of the subject in Der Geisterseher (1786-9), published in three parts over three years. In 1792, Heinrich Zschokke created a double aristocrat/mercenary antagonist in The Bravo of Venice (1805), a gothic type tale translated from the German by Mathew Lewis. The story confirms Venice as a centre of political corruption and treachery, but it also addresses a noteworthy shift in the villain’s typical identity. The dual character Abellino/Flodoardo represented simultaneously the dark side of nobility and a rich thirst for adventure. He is an entrepreneurial fortune seeker, in a bourgeois way.

In this respect, the Italian villain functions as a depository for social apprehensions, fluctuating between the evil aristocrat and the evil bourgeois (or both in Zschokke’s case), depending on the writer’s view. However, as Fred Botting points out, villains are rarely the cause of evil themselves; real vice is identified as an institutional problem.[5] The power of Venetian cultural and political ideology reached down into the modern era, even after the Serenissima collapsed. Paradoxically, it became the precise method of the British nation’s imperial project, encapsulated in the guiding principle dividi et impera (divide and rule). In the 19th century, the winged lion from Piazza di San Marco turned into the British lion at the service of the Queen, continuously vigilant in several public places and buildings in London.[6]

Watchful eyes were a preferred symbol of authoritarian behaviour, an attribute particularly suitable when dealing with themes related to power, oppression and tyranny. In fact, piercing eyes seem to be a common feature employed to represent these degenerate gothic banditti who ‘seemed to penetrate, at a single glance, into the hearts of men, and to read their most secret thoughts; few persons could support their scrutiny, or even endure to meet them twice’ (The Italian, p. 35). Throughout gothic novels we can find examples of browbeating, overpowering eyes. Ambrosio, in The Monk, exhibits ‘a certain severity in his look and manner that inspired universal awe and few could sustain the glance of his eye at once fiery and penetrating’ (p. 9). Melmoth had a ‘full-lighted blaze of those demon eyes’ (Melmoth, the wanderer,1820, p. 12).[7] The caliph Vathek (Vathek, 1786)[8] was a pleasing figure, but when enraged ‘one of his eyes became so terrible, that no person could bear to behold it’ (p. 2). It is curious that Vathek seems to have just one menacing eye, perhaps a bit of Beckfordian humour jesting at the cyclopic nature of totalising, authoritarian governments.

As mentioned before, gothic characters are generally not psychologically profound; the great majority remains unchanged in thought and resolution throughout the story. Their thoughts are rarely disclosed to the reader and their voices are heard mostly within dialogues. The use of the third person, instead of the first, makes the whole reading experience less dramatic. Although these subjective incursions are not taken very far, perhaps the villains can be considered as the only characters that undergo some internal conflict. These poor psychological deliberations (a step back in comparison to Lovelace) become especially evident in their final punishment, when their personalities swing between sinfulness and absolution. Unfortunately, all the defiance the villains displayed throughout the novel is invariably subdued at the end. It is my opinion that some of the skilful construction of gothic villains is harmed ultimately due to a ‘Puritan’ regret and exoneration.

Although he manages to poison his rival friar, a dying and weak Schedoni ends his participation as a bent and curbed antagonist. Overthrown, Manfred (The Castle of Otranto, 1764) also regrets his vileness and withdraws to a life of seclusion. The caliph Vathek blames his mother for putting boundless ambition in his heart. His repentance comes too late, as his heart will burn forever in the Hell of the Giaour. The padre Ambrosio, who sold his soul to the devil, also cries for divine mercy. The Daemon, infuriated by his sobbing, takes him for a vertiginous flight and then drops him from the heights. In agony, he is left to die for seven days, pestered by flies and scavengers, until a torrent finally washes his carcase away. Public confessions, sudden changes of heart and final repentances bend these narratives to moral conclusions. In order to re-establish balance in the social fabric, it is not enough to punish Evil, but it is also necessary to end the villains participation with a penitent ‘I am sorry for what I have done’ in order to secure the appropriate ethical conditions in the dénouement. This apologetic condition is prevalent in the ‘classical’ English gothic, despite the minor variations concerning how it happens. As a reaction against the international power represented by the Catholic Church, the repentance of the villain reaffirms the honourable political, social and religious track of British identity. It reinforces the idea of national construction by opposition of values and cultures. These sometimes rather blunt, last minute accommodations of interests, seem also to mirror political resolutions taken at the time, which assisted the ‘landed’ and the ‘monied’ interests[9] in finding ways to keep the upper classes in power.

[1] Sage interprets Protestantism as a social ‘cement’, ‘a common set of doctrines which hold English culture together’. IN: Victor Sage. Horror Fiction in the Protestant Tradition. London: Macmillan, 1988 (p. xiii).
[2] I am referring here to the famous passage in which Henry Tilney reprehends Catherine Morland for indulging in absurd gothic fantasies, after all she should ‘Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians.’ IN: Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 (chapter XXIV, p. 199).[3] Mathew Lewis. The Monk. London: The Folio Society, 1984. All subsequent quotations taken from this edition. References in parenthesis.
[4] There are many different literary images in the depiction of Venice. Sage discusses paradoxes in the city’s literary representations (e.g. Venice the Rich, Venice the Wise, Venice the Just, Venice, citta galante and Black Venice). I take here the ‘Black Venice’ as a part of the representational model of the gothic. IN: ‘Black Venice: Conspiracy and Narrative Masquerade in Schiller, Zschokke, Lewis, and Hoffman’. Still unpublished.
[5] Fred Botting. The Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996 (p. 89).[6] The similarities between the Venetian and the British symbols are my observations.
[7] Charles Maturin. Melmoth, the wanderer. London: Penguin, 2000. All references from this edition.
[8] William Beckford. Vathek. London: Oxford University Press, 1970. All references from this edition.
[9] The ‘landed’ interest was represented by the aristocracy and the ‘monied’ interest by the up-and-coming bourgeoisie. IN: Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (p. 52).

Ann Radcliffe, the great enchantress (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

When The Italian first came out, in 1797, it soon achieved a huge popular success. Its publication contributed to consolidate Ann Radcliffe’s celebrity, but previous honours and glory were already conferred to the lady known as ‘Queen of Romance’. For this novel, considered by some the roof and crown of her work, Mrs. Radcliffe received the sum of 800 pounds[1], a substantial amount for the time and significantly more than any other novelist was being paid. ‘The Great Enchantress’, as she was also known, rejoiced then in a comfortable position. She was an established affluent writer, acclaimed by the public and famous for her captivating books.

Following her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), Ann Radcliffe published A Sicilian Romance (1790), which was regarded by Sir Walter Scott as the first English poetical novel[2]. This was succeed by The Romance of the Forest (1791). Then came The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), upon which her literary reputation greatly rests, it is regarded as a masterpiece of the genre.

Ann Radcliffe seemed to be a rare case of pleasing both public and critic. She often received favourable attention from the reviewers who approved her ‘correctness of sentiment’, her ‘elegance of style’ and ‘proper characterisation’. This reverence towards her work was due to her postulation of traditional ideals amidst an uproar of new ones, a stand much valorised by right-wing parties of that English society. Mrs. Radcliffe was quite conservative in her views, she was not a writer who aimed at questioning the established order, and by the end of her stories she would have conveyed a message of bourgeois moral, value and domesticity, according to the 18th century historical understandings.

However, this mannerly veneration of her books was not an unanimous practice. Some aspects of her style disappointed the critical reception and were severely scrutinised by the faultfinders. Instead of praising, they alluded to the fact her latter literary production was inferior to the former. Opposing criticism pointed out her formulas of ‘explained supernatural’ were growing tiring and predictable from overuse. Essays published in literary magazines stated her ‘suspense technique’ aroused the reader so high that, in the outcome, it could not fulfil expectations. It was also noted in these reviews her talent for description was ‘exhaustive’ and ‘excessive’. Fred Botting points out the ambivalence concerning this matter: “These criticism of the novel’s excess point to a contradiction between style and project of the novel which as to warn against the danger of excess”[3]. Nevertheless, in the turn of the18th century Mrs. Radcliffe’s books were indisputable best sellers. She had become the most read author of her time, positively excelling at landscaping painting and at portraying of villainies.

She was born Ann Ward in 1764, the very year Sir Horace Walpole was publishing The Castle of Otranto. Her father, William Ward, was a haberdasher in London, though, he and his wife had contacts in artistic circles. When her family moved to Bath (1772), she may have attended a school run by Sophia and Harriet Lee[4] and been influenced to write gothic fiction. In 1787, she married the lawyer William Radcliffe, who later in life became proprietor of English Chronicle and who is credited to have encouraged her in writing ventures. From 1789 to 1797 she wrote the works that made her a respected novelist and poet. However, Ann Radcliffe interrupted her career at this point and never, herself, published a book again. She withdrew from the literary scene and lived a secluded life.

Her literary production include more titles, still, they made little success when compared to the novels previously mentioned. Mrs. Radcliffe was a travel enthusiast and wrote a book of her tour through Holland and Germany, A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794..., published in 1795. Gaston de Blondeville was written in 1801, but only published posthumously in 1826. Earlier on, Ode to Terror (1810) was published, in which it was declared that Ann Radcliffe had gone insane and died of the ‘terrors’. In 1816, she was assumed dead, and a compilation of her verse came out, The Poems of Ann Radcliffe. In later life Ann Radcliffe suffered from asthma and died on 7th February 1823. It was claimed in the Monthly Review that ‘she died in a state of mental desolation not to be described’.

Roger Lonsdale[5] offers an explanation for Mrs. Radcliffe early retirement. Based on a 1802 report by Charlotte Smith, Lonsdale sustains her husband restrained her from calling anymore ‘spirits from the vastly deep’ of her imagination. She was also said to have inherited property from her parents in 1798 and 1800, so she may have had less financial motivation, furthermore, she suffered from and old -fashioned uneasiness about being a professional author. From a different perspective J.M.S. Tompkins[6] demonstrates she retired mainly due to disapprobation with the ways gothic fiction writing had trodden. A trend of gothic based on the German type of novel, Schauerroman, introduced blunt terror and heavy handed violence, contrasting with the subtle thrills of the English mode. In order to disassociated herself from the extravagant mob gothic novels had become, she dropped the pen. However, the actual reason why Mrs. Radcliffe, having reached such a high degree of success, retired from the writing business, remains more mysterious than any of her mysteries.


[1] CLERY, E.J. Research Fellow in English at Sheffield Hallam University, wrote the introduction and notes on The Italian edition I used for this work, he reckons it would be worth £ 60,000 today.[2] Ibid, Ibidem.
[3] BOTTING, Fred. Gothic. London, Routledge, 1996 (p.67).
[4] E.J. Cleary. Notes on The Italian.
[5] LONSDALE, Roger(ed.). Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford, Oxford University Press,1990. (p.449)
[6] TOMPKINS, J.M.S. The Popular Novel in England 1770-1800. London, Methuen & CO LTD, 1961(p.247).

The Italian, or the confessional of the black penitents (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

The narrative is placed in Naples, in the year 1764, when an English traveller "happened to stop before the portico of the Santa Maria del Pianto, there he sees an "extraordinary figure" and decides to ask a local friar who that singular man was. "An assassin", the friar peacefully replies. The outraged traveller considers it a crime too heinous for the man to be freely circulating. The merciful friar explains he has sought sanctuary in the holy church.

Structurally, this initial chapter serves as a hook to introduce the story, the traveller receives a volume from the friar containing the story of another assassin, an episode which occurred back in 1758. These two characters, having accomplished their preparative role, are vanished from the narrative never to be returned to. It is the readers themselves who will access the report, in other words, they will become the English traveller. By then, we have already been made complicit of an ideological point of view. Outbursts against the inequities of overseas nations were a familiar cliché familiar for the English 18th-century reader.

Had The Italian (1798) been written a few decades before, Ann Radcliffe might have opted for a preface, where she would declare the book was originally an ancient manuscript recently located and her work was merely that of an editor or translator. This manoeuvre was regularly used by gothic fiction writers. Horace Walpole employed this resource in the first edition of The Castle of Otranto(1764) in order to heap veracity for the work, as well as to protect his identity. In face of the good reception the novel obtained, he reconsidered this position in the second publication. At that time, fiction reading was considered a waste of time, many authors would not expose their identities, appealing to pseudonyms or artifices such as the long-lost manuscript. At the same time readers would not admit they were consuming fiction, as they ought to be absorbing knowledge with something more instructional and worthwhile. The novel form was still fresh and not highly regarded at that time. Radcliffe, however, belonged to a succeeding moment when these attitudes were being revised. Furthermore, she was absolutely conscious of her commitment to the imagination as an end, and that her mind-escaping fiction was written mostly for delight, leaving the tutoring aspects for the background.

The Italian emerges as a novel obsessed with the family. The success of this tale lies in an intense desire for bonds, whether this family is biological, sociological or national. Being a novel written by a traditional Englishwoman, there is a dichotomy created between the multitude of English readers and the Continental, Catholic and often Italian characters. The author conveys through the story a notion of ‘otherness’ in contrast with the English beliefs. The gothic obsession with the Catholic clergy as repositories of evil, represents the danger from the outside. From a historicist and political viewpoint, England is this big family threatened by the Revolution going on in the mainland. This connection between politics and literature was formerly pointed out by T.J. Matthias in The Pursuits of Literature (1796), he perceived, at the very moment it was happening, a straight relation between gothic novels and the impending revolution across the channel, disturbing the domestic structure, harmony, and moral property with its passion and violence.

From an immanent perspective, the gothic hero is also an outsider in his own aristocratic family. He is the one who does not fulfill with the established order and seeks, outside his social family, thrills of forbidden love. As for the gothic heroines, they are simultaneously outsiders by virtue of their gender and upholders of the ascending bourgeois values. Though it is placed elsewhere, the gothic novel privileges a certain model of social understanding and class behaviour, which reflects the shifts and anxieties of 18th-century English society.

Vivaldi’s family is a peculiar one. While the hero’s father, the Marchese di Vivaldi, adopts the ordinary paternal intimidation (the family name to zeal for, the honour of the house, disclaim you as my son); his mother, the Marchesa, and her enigmatic confessor, take matters a step further, as far as cold-blooded murder. The casuistry by which the villain brings the Marchesa to this crossing, representing, at the same time, herself as the originator of the scheme is really shrewd and intricate. The scenes between the pair show the extraordinary dialogue skills of Mrs. Radcliffe. This villain is the lurid Schedoni, a character who is capable of great evil and yet maintains certain majesty of demeanour, his indifference to ethics is pleasantly intriguing, as he makes of it a matter of relativity.

‘To what do you allude, righteous father’ enquired the astonished Marquesa; ‘what indignity, what impiety has my son to answer for? I entreat you will speak explicitly, that I may prove I can lose the mother in the strict severity of the judge.’
‘That is spoken with the grandeur of sentiment, which has always distinguished you, my daughter! Strong minds perceive that justice is the highest of the moral attributes, mercy is only the favourite of weak ones’

The abyss, the mountain and the castle (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

Initially diffused by the gothic novel, and later revisited by romances of chivalry; the abyss, the mountain and the castle were very popular images in 18th and 19th century literature. With the popularisation of the novel these images went on to spread to almost every European literature. Their features were submitted to constant re-interpretations and ended up being recreated or rearranged by later writers, as the images reached even further corners of the world later in the 19th century. An exemplary scene, which features this multiple images of gothic landscape, can be found in Ann Radcliffe. The castle here in The Italian (1796)[1] takes the form of a monastery but it could also appear in gothic romances in the shape of a church or a fortress.

Along this deep and shadowy perspective a river, which was seen descending among the cliffs of a mountain, rolled with impetuous force, fretting and foaming amidst the dark rocks in its descent, and then flowing in a limpid lapse to the brink of other precipices, whence again it fell with thundering strength to the abyss, throwing its misty clouds of spray high in the air, and seeming to claim the sole empire of this solitary wild. Its bed took up the whole breadth of the chasm, which some strong convulsion of the earth seemed to have formed, not leaving space even for a road along its margin. The road, therefore, was carried high among the cliffs, that impended over the river, and seemed as if suspended in air; while the gloom and vastness of the precipices, which towered above and sunk below it, together with the amazing force and uproar of the falling waters, combined to render the pass more terrific than the pencil could describe, or language can express. Ellena ascended it, not with indifference but with calmness; she experienced somewhat of a dreadful pleasure in looking down upon the irresistible flood; but this emotion was heightened into awe, when she perceived that the road led to a slight bridge, which, thrown across the chasm at an immense height, united two opposite cliffs, between which the whole cataract of the river descended. The bridge, which was defended only by a slender railing, appeared as if hung amidst the clouds. Ellena, while she was crossing it, almost forgot her misfortunes. [...] The transition was as the passage through the vale of death to the bliss of eternity; but the idea of its resemblance did not long remain with Ellena. Perched high among the cliffs of a mountain, which might be said to terminate one of the jaws of this terrific gorge, and which was one of the loftiest of a chain that surrounded the plains, appeared the spires and long terraces of a monastery; and she soon understood that her journey was to conclude there.(The Italian, vol. I, chapter VI, pp. 63-64)

The awe inspiring scene carries the three images: the dangerous precipice, towering mountains and a monastery at the end that appears very ominous. It is remarkable in the passage how the abyss stems as a powerful, uncontrollable element. It encompasses an irresistible force which both attracts and compels to destruction, embodying an ambiguity which is central to the gothic form. This contradiction is particularly explicit when Ellena approaches the gorge; at the same time she is reminded of her own death, she does not resist to peak down. The passage also shows how gothic landscape may assume ideological significances. This is captured above with the introduction of the word ‘empire’ in the depiction of the scenery, addressing issues of domination and national sovereignty. The mountain and the castle will also bring political connotations, another key attribute of gothic novels [2], demonstrating how aesthetic symbols have values attached to them. Henceforth, I will use these images to isolate some of the gothic conventions, ultimately relating them to aspects of national identity.

Radcliffe’s usage of the three images was somewhat in tune with a gloomier philosophical disposition which emerged in Europe in 18th century. Her formidable description of landscapes in the Alps and in the Pyrenees reminded readers of the ‘truth’ that was to be found in Nature. To this branch of philosophy, sceptical of the Cartesian principles, the idea of the mountain evoked primarily the undisputable power of the natural world. Mountains represented the notion of timelessness which contrasted with human mortality. The real laws of the world were not those created by men but those inherent to Nature, which is bigger than anyone and whose last and irrefutable authority is death. At the same time overpowering mountain ranges indicated Nature’s supremacy over the designs of men, they also inferred that we live in a world of chaos and disorder. This was represented by the irregularity of mountainous topography, an evidence which defied overtly simple neoclassical standards, founded on symmetry, proportion and rationality. Lastly, the image of the mountain also meant a place of seclusion. To be in the mountains meant that one was largely by their own means, astray from society and susceptible to the vicissitudes of the landscape. In another interpretation, to climb the mountain could mean a human quest for spirituality, yielding a search for revelation. This more mystical aspect of the mountain can be noted in the passage above in the metaphor: ‘the vale of death to the bliss of eternity’, contrasting the mountain and the precipice which the heroine safely glides over.

The abyss was traditionally seen as a source of imminent danger, reflecting the possibility of being headed to destruction. It was a recurrent image in the libertine novels of Sade,[3] which appeared around the same period of the gothic novel. The marquis used the image to illustrate the terrible void of life. He questioned the existence of a benevolent Nature/God (the foundation of any moral) by focusing on aristocratic characters who indulge on ruthless passions. At the same time he denied the Rousseauesque idea of the kindness of human nature by parodying the discourse of sensibility, portraying his plebeian characters as potential victims in an essentially violent and unethical world. Sade’s work demonstrates, by choice of themes and transgressive language, that he was more engaged in philosophical debate than in aesthetic creation. His writings confronted the two major trends of thought in the period, the rationalist and the 1800 religious philosophers, representing one position of this gloomier outlook that questioned Enlightenment philosophy.

The image of the castle stems in this context as an ambivalent place. On that spiritual note it could denote a refuge or a sanctuary in the mountains, but it also represented the symbol of a noble past. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke uses the metaphor of a gothic castle in support of the English heritage and monarchy.[4] His point of view was connected to an aristocratic or conservative part of the society. Defending long-standing relations within the social fabric, he expressed a rejection of the revolutionary upraising in France. This nostalgia about the past and the lament for the end of a chivalric age constituted indexes of an idealization of a medieval era as an ‘organic’ world based on tradition and family bonds, in comparison with a modern bourgeois society.

On a more sinister interpretation the castle implied a monstrous place where feudal or monastic tyrants, isolated from the eyes of society, could indulge in perverted practices. In that sense, it was related with a despotic government, arbitrary power and aristocratic privileges that could no longer exist in the new world. This view was adopted by democrats like Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft. This approach was more related to the Whig party, the middle class and the class of society who shared a progressive opinion. This tension and duplicity about the image of the castle signalled conflicting political stands in a dispute that was reflected in literary contexts.

Ann Radcliffe’s treatment of the three previous images was intended more as a novelistic appreciation than as a head-on engagement in this debate. Her work balances romantic aesthetics (scenery, landscapes, beauty and terror) with Enlightenment ideals (the limits of reason, explained supernatural). She avoided graphic descriptions of horror that could provoke reactions of outrage in the public. A different trend of gothic fiction was pursued by Matthew Lewis in The Monk (1796), based on the German type of novel, Schauerroman (horror-romance), which introduced blunt terror and heavy handed violence contrasting with the subtle thrills of the Radcliffean mode. When evoking the mountain, the abyss and the castle, she was primarily aiming to raise feelings of sublime, in the terms proposed earlier by Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). Her awareness of the aesthetic possibilities implied in Burke’s treatise, itself a revision of ideas attributed to the Greek Longinus, made her invest chiefly in obscurity, danger and pain as passions capable of generating pleasure for the readers, as well as the characters. In Burke’s paradoxical observation, delight could be extracted from terror if experienced from a safe distance (reading is a supposedly safe distance). This is what Ellena seeks by looking down the abyss as she crosses the bridge, extracting a frisson from the possibility of falling in the overwhelming precipice. If a similar feeling was also experienced by the reader of the novel, then this typical Radcliffean scene would have achieved its purpose.

[1] Ann Radcliffe. The Italian, or the Confessional of Black Penitents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition. Volumes, chapters and pages references will be given in parentheses. The brackets here indicate my omissions.
[2] 18th century reviewers were in no doubt that gothic novels represented a kind of political literature. Two of the most influential accounts can be found in T.J. Mathias’ The Pursuits of Literature (1796) and in the Marquis de Sade’s, Les Idées sur le romans, preface to the novel Les Crimes de l’Amour (1800). Though both commentators diverge as to what interpretation they should give to the political inferences of these novels.
[3] I am thinking here of the abyssal images in the novels Justine, or the misfortunes of virtue (p.32), 120 Days of Sodom (pp. 37 and 363), Juliette, or the prosperities of Vice (p.76) and The Philosophy in the Bedroom (p.112). References to the editions and publishers are given in the bibliography.
[4] Burke believed that the French monarchy was one of the best in Europe and its mistake was not to make concessions to the uprising bourgeoisie. IN: Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982. (p. 16).

O Romance Gótico (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

Diversas forma de romance surgiram no século XVIII, o que torna as definições pouco exatas. Nessa época co-existiu o romance epistolar, o romance filosófico, o romance picaresco, o romance realista, o romance sentimental, o romance libertino, o romance histórico e galante, o romance em cartas, o romance de costumes, enfim, os gêneros são muitos assim como muitos desse romances apresentam estruturas híbridas, transitando entre gêneros sem se fixar em apenas um.

Para fins mais imediatos, focalizarei aqui o romance gótico ou as literaturas que afloraram nos séculos XVIII e XIX as quais se convencionou a contoversa alcunha de "fantásticas", sendo que se trata de uma expressão que abrange múltiplas definições. O teórico da literatura Tzvetan Todorov entende que o fantástico remete a um gênero literário que suscita a ambiguidade entre realidade e sonho, ou seja, uma dúvida quanto a natureza dos eventos narrados que tanto permitem uma explicação racional, quanto outra que pressupõe a existência do sobrenatural: "Le fantastique mène donc une vie pleine de dangers, et peut s’évanouir à tout instant" (Introduction à la Littérature Fantastique, p. 46). Segundo Magalhães Jr., a literatura fantástica em suas raízes européias, floresce de dois troncos independentes, um inglês e o outro francês. Este último radica na narrativa Le Diable Amoreux, escrito em 1772, de Jacques Cazotte, praticamente a primeira demonstração de literatura fantástica no ocidente, fonte a que irão beber E.T.A. Hoffman, Nerval e todos os oníricos fantásticos de Nodier a Kafka.

O tronco inglês, por sua vez, radica impreterivelmente no romance The Castle of Otranto, cinco magros capítulos escritos por Sir Horace Walpole, e fonte da qual irão beber Ann Radcliffe, Charles Maturin, Bram Stoker, toda a literatura gótica do século XIX, como também a policial, e a de suspense dos dias de hoje. Esse é o tronco literário que pretendemos apreender para estudo.

Os escritores góticos produziram uma literatura popular, de consumo, durante os anos de 1765 a 1820, essas balizas temporais coincidem com a publicação do já mencionado The Castle of Otranto e se encerra com a publicação do romance Melmoth, the wanderer, de Charles Maturin, estes dois livros são tidos respectivamente como os marcos de início e fim do movimento gótico inglês. A partir de 1820, a ficção gótica começa a declinar, pois sua previsibilidade, impregnadas de um sensacionalismo exagerado, haviam gasto sua magia junto aos leitores. Em 1818 é publicado uma paródia de romance gótico, escrita por Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey satiriza as fantasias absurdas dos romances góticos e o seu gosto por um universo imaginário em detrimento de uma perspectiva mais realista. Por outro ângulo, o livro insinua a força de contágio da ficção na vida real, manifesta nas vicissitudes da personagem Catherine Morland.

Não obstante, o gótico "canonizado", se é que podemos chamá-lo assim, deixou marcas indeléveis e podemos achar seus elementos - cenários, símbolos, moods, enredo - disseminados em várias manifestações artísticas do mundo de hoje. Muitos elementos góticos sobreviveram ao tempo e suas convenções se perpetuam até hoje na literatura e cinema moderno.

O gênero gótico foi uma leitura muito popular para sua época e o grande sucesso de público deu início a uma série de lançamentos do mesmo gênero, por isso o gótico é encarado por uma parte da crítica como um aglomerado de formulas, convenções literárias e lugares comuns previsíveis ao leitor. Os símbolos usados pelos autores para a criação de efeito (ruínas, castelos, labirintos, igrejas), as ambientações em países distantes e católicos, a donzela em perigo, são exemplos dessa previsibilidade. Talvez a literatura gótica tenha sido um pouco decepcionante para os escritores românticos posteriores, pois os personagens fantasiosos não podiam transcender a realidade.

Entretanto, foi desse contexto cultural e desse gênero literário que o movimento romântico emergiu. Em termos de periodização, a maioria dos teóricos admite a passagem para a escola romântica deixando de fora um dos mais interessantes movimentos produzidos pela literatura. Mesmo assim, é uma corrente marginalizada pela crítica que a classifica de subliteratura sem entrada ou registro nos compêndios de literatura. O gótico permanece como um gênero menor que teve grandes influências sobre os gêneros atuais. Sem representantes entre as obras que constituem o cânone literário em língua inglesa podemos inferir, talvez, que Frankenstein, ou Modern Prometheus, escrito em 1818 por Mary Shelley, seja a obra gótica de maior difusão e longevidade, submetida a diversas releituras, especialmente no cinema.

Em parte, pode-se dizer que o romance gótico seria uma desilusão com os ideais iluministas. O romance gótico emergiu no século XVIII representando a tomada de consciência individual frente aos dilemas sócio-político-culturais da época. O efeito da individualização na literatura já havia sido estabelecido com os romances de Samuel Richardson e de outros romancistas da "sensibilidade", que em detrimento dos cenários e das aventuras romanescas investiram na psicologia dos personagens. Os romancistas góticos foram menos abilidosos em sua invectiva psicológica e são freqüentemente acostados de terem popularizado seus romances através de personagens planificados e caricaturais. Nos romances góticos, as emcees e interioridade dos personagens são extravagates de uma maneira sem precedente, suas paixões, seus medos, são deslocados para fenômenos naturais, sobre naturais e até objetos inanimados.

O gótico é um gênero tradicionalmente escrito em inglês e no Brasil não houveram obras que possam ser consideradas góticas (entretanto houve a apropiação de um discurso gótico). A localização tropical, a inexistência de castelos medievais, a condição de ex-colônia, a religião católica são fatores que contribuíram para o não florescimento do gênero no Brasil. Quando a literatura gótica estava no seu apogeu na Inglaterra, os poetas brasileiros escreviam com o sentimento barroco e árcade. Mas isso não que dizer que o gótico passou desapercebido em terras brasileiras e pode, inclusive, ter contribuído para a formação do romance brasileiro.

On Gothic Literature (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

The gothic novel was intensely produced and avidly consumed from 1764 to around 1820, after that it started to decline. Among the reasons for its decay are a misevaluation on the narrative’s complexity, that made plots too intricate and confusing, along with an overexploitation of the genre by the increasing culture of consumerism .

The gothic is a manifestation affiliated to the Romance tradition, consequently it assumes some of its system of codes (representation of time and place) and methods of composition (structuring and development). There is a relative consistency of conventions, that make the gothic novel recognisable as a distinct type of fiction. Like in romance narratives, the gothic novel sets itself in past ages (often medieval) and in far away countries (usually Italy, Spain or France). The narrative progresses on an endless sequence of amazing circumstances, involving the heroine in breathtaking perils and lots of travelling around the country. There are also many symbolic representations in the gothic form, such as: disintegrating abbeys where malevolent priests dwell, gloomy castles inhabited by tyrannical aristocrats, dark forests where bandits hide, sublime sights of wilderness where persecuted heroines fear for the worst. It is then a hybrid form that blends idealised medieval proprieties with late 1800s manners and concerns. The gothic phenomenon was short-lived and delineated a response to a mutating society, within a specific period of time. However, some of its legacy endures and can still be observed in modern narratives, especially in the cinema. Although, these current stories contain elements recalled from the gothic tradition, they are not gothic fiction.

Historically, gothic aesthetics counteracted with the neo-classical ideals of balance, harmony and rationality. Depending on the outlook, generally linked to political affiliation, the word ‘gothic’ conveyed two meanings. Firstly, it designated an idealised democratic and freedom-loving British heritage, in opposition to a Roman and Greek legacy. In a fast changing society, it stood for a rejection of the revolutionary, the progress and the industrialism, that were taking place. This point of view was connected to an aristocratic or conservative part of the society. Secondly, the term ‘gothic’ expressed ancient relations within the social fabric. It denoted ‘old’, representing worn out ideals that could no longer exist in the new world that was being formed. This approach was related to the Whig party, the middle class and the row of society who shared a progressive opinion. The gothic novel was the space to discuss political questions, though, placing these anxieties in other countries and time. It embraced the liberal values of sentimentalism, virtue and family mingled with an aristocratic past; however, marked by refutation of tyranny, mishandling of power. In trying to conciliate these social disputes, the genre adopted the figure of a chivalric hero, a romantic knight who behaved according to the bourgeoisie values. His antagonist was the gothic villain, the embodiment of evil itself, representing the dark side of nobility and of the religious institutions.

Ann Radcliffe’s writings represent the zenith of gothic production but other novelists before her also developed the cult of suspense. Some people and books paved way for her works and influenced her to some degree. Among them, we could name the Graveyard Poets, who started at questioning rationalism, as well as proposing a scenario for the narratives (even though cemeteries and ghosts were not a breakthrough to British literature). It was, however, Sir Horace Walpole who actually planted the seed of the ‘uncanny’ and coined the genre, naming his narrative The Castle of Otranto, a gothic tale (1764). His merit also consists of conscientiously mixing romance and novel, giving birth to what would be known as gothic fiction. However, The Castle of Otranto was considered far too incredible by his successors, and for that reason later authors chose to reform his unsophisticated dream-like tale. Other writers that shaped Radcliffe’s literature are: Clara Reeve, Charlotte Smith and Sophia Lee, who also used heroines set in the Middle Ages or Renaissance, and represented the past in terms of a rational and moral present. They pursued a more ‘domestic’ kind of writing, where the represented situations were probable and the supernatural circumstances were due to imaginary fears. Edmund Burke in, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), provided a theory for the gothic machinery from which Ann Radcliffe drew an aesthetic reading. Burke states that most of the ideas which are capable of making a strong impression on the mind may be reduced nearly to two heads: self-preservation and society. To the ends of one or the other, all our passions are calculated to answer. The passions that regard the preservation of the individual turn chiefly on pain and danger, and they are the most powerful of the passions. She was acquainted with his theses applying them in her works to create thrilling effects.

Mrs. Radcliffe, in her turn, influenced a subsequent generation of illustrious writers, like Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Charles Maturin and Charlotte Brontë. Ann Radcliffe, in short, kept the lamp of Romance burning much more steadily than the lamps in her novels, which are always blown out, in the moment of excited apprehension, by the night wind, sneaking in the damp corridors of haunted abbeys. The decade of l790s was the gothic novel’s peak, it had become a vogue and an obsession among admires who could not seem to read enough of this genre. It had also developed into a very profitable business for booksellers and professional writers, who were kept constantly busy trying to meet the public demand, providing for the circulating libraries. This frenzy for gothic fiction occasioned an enormous production, most of it was merely directed to boost sales, and had very little preoccupation for literary innovation. The popularity of Ann Radcliffe’s novels was also attested by the many imitators of her work, who would change a few words in the title and come out with pearls like: The mysteries of the Forest, The Monk of Udolpho, Italian Mysteries, or even pseudonyms as little original as Mary Ann Radcliffe.

The Italian (1797) is an important landmark in this epidemic of gothic fiction output, even though the topic of the book is more of a theme of this world than usual: the parents of a young noble trying to prevent him from marrying an unknown, penniless (yet virtuous) girl. The thread of the story follows the thwarted loves of Vicentio di Vivaldi and Ellena di Rosalba. Ann Radcliffe builds The Italian’s narrative based on the Richardsonian model of ‘persecuted innocence’. This form of organising the story’s plot takes after Samuel Richardson’s concept of novel, revolving round the conflict between ‘virtue and distress’ where the heroine is taken to the boundaries of resistance, having her beliefs severely tested, only to emerge victorious in the end. It is in this very theme that most gothic fiction found its backbone. To this well-known recipe of the realist novel, Mrs. Radcliffe adds a pinch of terror and a knob of sublime. She does not pact with a single avowed ghost, every abnormal happening is finally explained away by normal causes. The many entangled threads of her complex web, the incidents which puzzle you at the beginning, fall naturally into place before the end.

"He would, perhaps, have been somewhat disappointed, to have descended suddenly from the region of fearful sublimity, to which he had soared- the world of terrible shadows- to the earth, on which he daily walked, and to an explanation simply natural"

She delighted in descriptions of scenery, usually drawn entirely from her inner consciousness but many painters receive mention in the novels of Ann Radcliffe. One of her references was Salvatore Rosa, a 17th century Italian landscape painter, who created dramatic landscapes peopled with peasants and banditti. Like Ann Radcliffe, he intended to create a feeling of awe and sublime in the minds of his audience. The landscapes of another Italian artist, Giambattista Piranesi, also influenced many English Gothic writers, especially with his powerful black and white figurative engravings of Roman ruins, spectacular landscapes where banditti would lurk in ambush and his Carcieri fascinated the English mind.

"Frequently as they glided round a promontory, whose shaggy masses impended far over the sea, such magic scene of beauty unfolded, adorned by these dancing groups on the bay beyond, as no pencil could do justice to. The deep clear waters reflected every image of the landscape ... all touched by the silvery tint and soft shadows of moon-light"
It is not uncommon to find in Ann Radcliffe’s texts expressions that refer to drawing or painting. It is believed she once said her aim was to do with words what painters do with brushes. In these recurrent allusions to pictorial scenes lie Radcliffe’s poetical component, often noted in her prose, and which rendered her the admiration of many writers.

Calvino's Inferno (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

At the end of Invisible Cities, a kind of summary is proposed. Marco Polo talks about the possibilities of an ideal city that might be flourishing somewhere in the world; not as a ready-made, totalising reality but rather as something scattered and fragmented. What matters, Polo says, is to look for this Promised Land, visited only by the imagination, not known or founded. Faced with the Venetian’s traveller arguments, Kublai Khan‘s reaction is to have the last say, leafing though his maps he highlights only "the cities that menace in nightmares and maledictions", and concludes that: "It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us". The Emperor destroys all the hopes of a Utopia, as he perceives it has been somewhat subtracted from his horizon of certainties. Playing against the authoritative word that decrees and generalizes, Marco Polo manages to put in a relativist counter-discourse: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together."

As proposed by Marco Polo, the relations between the elements used to describe the cities, giving body to the narrative, are not exactly clear to the reader. His discourse is permeated by metaphors, causing the words and the meanings to break down in too many ideas. The reader may feel tempted to enter into this labyrinth of symbols, hoping to find a way out somewhere along the written lines. Others may try to assemble the secrete signs, as one would do with a jigsaw. It is suggested in the chess board passage that, perhaps, the best way to approach the book is with the eyes of the imagination, rather than with the rational, scrutinizing eye.

To understand, and like, Invisible Cities it is necessary to suspend logical, verisimilar accounts and try to let the curious investigation unveil the meanings. A possible way of reading the book is to bring about the opposing notions of Perfection and Hell in the context of contemporary cities. Calvino seems to point out in allegorical terms to an exhaustion of the modern scene, indicating, at the same time, a transcendence of utopic values. According to this reading it is possible to state that Invisible Cities is aligned with a broad concern that has marked the end of last century and which emerges solidly in the present one. The uneasiness with the urban condition; the perception of infernal traces and ruins in the megalopolis we live in.

Invisible Cities contextualise itself in a time when, contradictorily, cities start to think about themselves again; when the general wish is to reverse the decadence of urban centres and recover the roles of the cities. When the notion of multiculturalism, and the co-existence of multiple cultures becomes something essential. It is in this mood that these narratives, letting go of the preoccupation of being absolutely modern, build the scenery of cities as public spaces and cultural arenas. The city is unavoidable scenery given that it determines our daily affairs, shape our old frames of living, our turbulent present and our old fears. To be in it, or to read it in texts, which have read the city, is to elaborate solutions to the questions raised, even if they come in the form of further questions. Even if we live in menacing cities and no longer wait on the perfect city promised by progress. The job then is to distinguish when and where living hell manifests itself.

A Filosofia Crítica Sadiana (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

A retórica de Sade tinha como tática desqualificar a moralidade divina sobre a qual repousa a crença cristã. Seu mundo se apresenta cruel e caótico, sem Deus nem salvação. Ao mesmo tempo, o marquês refuta a teoria dos bons sentimentos, como queriam os filósofos enciclopedistas, que postulavam a bondade do ser humano e a moral sedimentada na benignidade natural. Para ele a criação de bons princípios inerentes aos homens representavam igualmente obstáculos para a libertação final. Desqualificando simultaneamente as bases da moral religiosa e da moral iluminista, o marquês só reconhecia como válido os instintos brutais da natureza.

Segundo a tese de Jacques Domenech, Sade se integraria na disputa do século XVIII com o intuito de desqualificar os dois grandes campos adversários que debatiam os fundamentos da moral. De um lado se colocavam os pensadores cristãos, que postulavam a impossibilidade do homem encontrar a salvação sem a ajuda de Deus, estes filósofos da religião fundamentavam a moral em princípios transcendentes. Do outro lado haviam os filósofos do otimismo antropológico, que sustentavam a bondade natural do homem como princípios imanentes. Estes últimos se dividiam em dois grupos, aqueles que defendiam a moral dos sentimentos (como Rousseau, Voltaire), ou seja, o bem e o mal são inerentes ao homem; e ainda aqueles chamados de materialistas (Helvetius, La Mettrie), que opõem-se à idéia de sentimento inato, sustentando que tudo é adquirido através do convívio social. Nesse caso a moral partiria do interesse e das paixões do indivíduo que deve buscar nas associações sociais a garantia deles.

Sade contesta os princípios da moral cristã e dos filósofos racionalistas, recusando suas garantias. Ainda segundo Domenech a originalidade do pensamento do marquês consiste em jogar um campo contra o outro, contestando a existência de Deus e da moral dos sentimentos ao mesmo tempo. Por um lado Sade se aproxima mais dos materialistas, porém nega a idéia de que é possível conciliar Natureza e sociedade. Movido pela vontade de provar, Sade faz da criação romanesca o espaço de um debate político e filosófico. No âmbito da composição da obra artística ele se apodera da apologética cristã e da forma do conto voltariano, o exemplo que balança mais harmoniosamente a ficção romanesca e o pensamento filosófico, seria a sua segunda versão de Justine.

Film Noir, Female Gothic, Gothic film: in search of definitions (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

While looking into the 40s film production, particulary the American production, a great partition becomes evident: the luxurious creations from the main Hollywood studios like MGM, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros and RKO, started giving way to a marginal, intermediate to low-budget production. These "alternative" films began to spring up showing a more nihilistic and cynical side of life in opposition to a cheerfulness and buoyancy of illustrious musicals.

The emergence of these secondary productions was possible at the time due to the existence of an audience for them. These films embraced more experimental attempts, trying out new tecniques that contrasted with the restricted agendas of the major institutions. Some of these new forms consisted of: voice-over narration (creating a confessional effect), some unconventional camera work, like the high-angular tilted camera (for impressive, exciting shots), or the eye-view (bringing the narrative to the first person, freeing the third person standpoint), the chiaro-escuro light contrast (for dense, atmospheric results). If aesthetically these films embarked on a more personal, dramatic angle; thematically they were characterised by the vicissitudes of urban life along with a shadowy, melancholic cosmopolitan setting. By the time the 50’s drew closer, this distinctive style was absorbed by the bigger productions, by then these films had already made an impact in the European taste and critics.

James Naremore argues that the zeitgeist ongoing in France predisposed them "to see America in certain ways", elaborating a reflection of it. Still according to the critic, by appreciating this new style of film that emerged in the States, the French were in fact praising their own cinema, and a similar kind of low-key lighting pictures they had fostered previously. Another historical junction which contributed to the establishment of this ethos, was the fact that in 1945 the publishing house Gallimard started circulating their translations of American and British crime novels referred as Série Noire. The following year the French critics Nino Frank and Jean-Pierre Chartier wrote articles stating the introduction of a new project in film-making: the American Film Noir.

It seems a general assumption among the specialised criticism, that these films were not thought of or known by that name anywhere other than France. It was not until the 1970’s that the coinage of the term Film Noir picked up in the States and started being extensively used in allusion to that style of film. However, Alain Silver disputes this postulation showing a photograph of Robert Aldrich, director of Kiss Me Deadly, holding a copy of Borde and Chaumenton´s first edition of the book Panorama du Film Noir Américain, in the set of Attack! already in 1956.

Nonetheless tracing filiations is less important here than stressing the pluralistic aspects these films embody, which have been described as "the product of a multifaceted interaction between developments within particular genres - the gangster/crime film and the gothic melodrama - fluctuating conditions of production and reception within the American film industry, and more diffuse cultural movements: modernism and post-modernism. Film noir was also the product of the complex interface between European and American cinema.". It seem to me that discussing the origins and giving nomenclatures to these films do not solve the actual questions they raised. I defend Film Noir as an inaccurate category, I will consider this ahead, however, the multicultural characteristics and the historical context in which these films flourished is the point worth of mention.

Wikipedia encyclopaedia explains Film Noir as essentially pessimistic stories that deal with "people trapped in a situation they did not want, often a situation they did not create, striving against random uncaring fate, and usually doomed. Almost all film noir plots involve the hard-boiled, disillusioned male (often a private eye) and the dangerous femme fatale. Usually because of sexual attraction or greed, the male commits vicious acts, and in the end both he and the femme fatale are punished or even killed for their actions". This concise and didactic definition implies a problematic issue: it seems to trap a large group of films into a reduced framework, excluding the possibility of any variation, or crossingovers in the stories. The definition above is partial and inconsistent, it does not do justice even to the small corpus I selected here, much less to the whole decade. Although organising knowledge is part of academic study, trying to establish neat classification borders for these films will inevitably fall in imprecision, perhaps missing out what they are in fact trying to communicate. As much convenient as it is to treat Film Noir as an umbrella term that encapsulates the marginal production of the 40s and early 50s, problematising on genre models is a common practice in Film Studies. In the case of Film Noir, critics will either reject the set boundaries or break it in sub-genres. Naremore considers it as "an unusually baggy concept, elaborated largely after the films themselves", but paradoxically he also refers to it as "necessary category" for film criticism.

As critics begun claiming some films as representatives of the invented genre Film Noir, the ones left out had to be fitted in another category. Some of these rejected films usually brought women as protagonists and thus a new classification started. Spicer postulates that "Hollywood drew extensively on Gothic tradition in the 1940s as a branch of the ‘woman’s film’, aimed at the numeric dominant female audience and displaying the ambivalent attitude towards the Victorian period. The first Gothic noir was Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940)". Here is an example of how difficult genre separation can become, this group of films, which share similar style and context of production, are assessed as two distinct genres. The basic criteria formerly employed to justify this division lies in the gender of the protagonist. By definition we have that Gothic Noir/Female Gothic films present heroines in the central role while Film Noir movies bring men as protagonists.

The term Female Gothic was coined in 1977 by Ellen Moers , who proposed an alternative way of thinking the gothic novel as a literary genre. Her studies concentrated on the role of women in this kind of literature, both as writers and as characters; however, she was not the first person to come up with a conception of generic conflict within the gothic novel. Moers built upon Robert Hume’s distinction between the novel of "terror", which had Ann Radcliffe as its foremost expression, and the novel of "horror," epitomised by M.G. Lewis. Hume’s classification benefited the male prevalent gothic written by Lewis, based on the German Schauerroman (horror-romance), overlooking Radcliffe’s importance to the gothic novel. This dismissal produced the gender related questions Moers problematised upon. Some of the question she raises relate to the gendered construction of the gothic hero and heroine, the link between the gothic settings and female sexuality, and the tension of monetary or class struggle with issues of femininity. Moer’s promoted a debate that made way for feminists theories and theorists, but her importance for this work regards the term she created.

Nowadays, in contemporary film jargon, Female Gothic is used to designate a kind of movie, generally produced in the 40’s, which has as central axis the "damsel in distress" created by the 18th century gothic novel. It also deals with some broader themes related to this Pre-romantic era, such as, psychic illnesses, fear of the supernatural and paranoia. Trying to fit films neatly into genres certainly leads to many mistakes, missing out on some films that could be thought as Female Gothic and including some others which purists would classify as crossovers or hybrids. Genres are not so promptly definable, and conforming to the could be an exclusive approach. A way of avoiding this is to look at a film-making periodic tradition.

Ian Conrich, however, has a much more elastic view of the question, he sees a broader, inclusive genre called Gothic Films and that extends its scope from George Mélièrs, Le Manoir du Diable (1896) to Toy Story (1995). "The Gothic in film is a form that has been generically mobile, repeatedly hybridising and mutating. Attempts to present a sufficiently expansive consideration of the Gothic film have been obstructed by its uniformity, with writers consequently preferring to examine specific divisions - the Hollywood monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s, the Horror films of Hammer, the cycle of the 1940 persecuted-women films and the dystopian visions of tech noir". The classification may have been pushed too far. A film that contains noir/gothic manifestations, as periferical elements in the narrative, can not be classified as noir/gothic on its whole. Toy Story, can be taken as an example of a film that contains some gothic feel, but it does not correspond to the essence of the movie. Conrich is probably referring to when Woody and Buzz Lightyear find themselves among deformed toys in sadistic Sid’s room, fearing being destroyed by his vicious dog Scud, but saying that Toy Story is a gothic movie might be pushing the borders of the term too far. To say it contains gothic features in its conception would be more appropriate for this film which is also an adventure, the story of a friendship and a comedy that children and parents will enjoy seeing.

Perhaps we should think of films as a production cycle, inserted in a tradition which share certain features. Andrew Spice points out that "Richard Maltby has argued that Hollywood feature film production is best understood as a volatile cycle of films initiated by a success of an originating film or films rather than as a stable arrangement of genres (Maltby,1995,p.107)". Durgnat says that Film Noir "describe not genres but dominant cycles or motifs, and in many, if not most, films would come under two headings, since interbreeding is intrinsic to motif processes". James Naremore sees it as "a series of historical frames or contexts" but he agues that "yet we must ground the term in some sort of adequate working definition if it is to warrant serious consideration as an object of either film or cultural history".

O Criminoso Marquês (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2005)

Muitos já ouviram falar de Donatien Alphonse François, o marquês de Sade (1740-1814), mais conhecido por ter emprestado seu nome para a psicopatologia humana que se convencionou chamar de sadismo, na qual castigos sexuais são infligidos com a finalidade de gerar o sofrimento da vítima e o deleite do algoz. Entretanto poucos sabem que pelos crimes de luxúria cometidos contra a sociedade francesa do século XVIII, o infame marquês pagou um preço caro e permaneceu grande parte da sua existência na prisão. Seu trajeto em vida foi errático, a origem nobre e próspera não foi o suficiente para impedir sua desdita. Mas Sade certamente desfrutou das riquezas e luxúrias da vida aristocrática francesa anterior à Revolução. Sua família, radicada na região de Provença, era bastante influente e orgulhava-se de uma comprovada descendência de Laura, musa do poeta italiano Petrarca. O jovem Sade, no auge da sua glória, ocupou o posto de capitão na cavalaria durante a guerra dos Sete Anos. Porém, a partir de 1768, um longo revés da fortuna passa a assolar o marquês.

Nesse ano suas práticas conhecidamente devassas lhe renderam uma condenação por sodomia, no processo movido por Rose Keller (ou Kailair), situação da qual ele escapa quase intocado. Posteriormente, suas constantes parties de libertinage o levam a outra condenação em 1772, no episódio conhecido como o caso das garotas da Rue de Capuchin. Devido a uma série de condições desfavoráveis, entre as quais pode-se citar os freqüentes excessos do marquês, seus desafetos pessoais, as intrigas familiares e políticas, a própria decadência da monarquia absolutista, parecem concentrar nele seu "bode expiatório". Em 1777, o tribunal o condena, em definitivo, a um encarceramento de quatorze anos, período mais longo que permaneceria na cadeia, mas não o último.

Mantido quase sempre em condições insalubres, Sade passa um total de vinte e sete anos de sua vida trancado em diferentes prisões e sanatórios da França, dos quais pode-se citar: Miolans, Vincennes, Saumur, Pierre-Enclise, Bastilha, Sainte-Pelagie, Madelonnettes, Saint-Lazare, Picpus e Charenton. Apesar dos longos anos de prisão, não foi na restrição da liberdade que o marquês de Sade encontrou reforma pela sua conduta libertina. Ao contrário, durante o tempo em que permaneceu preso, desenvolveu sua concepção oblíqua da natureza e do mundo. Seu entendimento caótico da natureza e a orientação fundamentalmente sexual do seu mundo, produzem um universo que exalta a mistura de libido e violência que jamais procurou refúgio na espiritualidade ou princípio divino. Obrigado à reclusão, o marquês passou por um processo de intelectualização na cadeia e tornou-se um escritor: despendia o tempo lendo, escrevendo cartas e elaborando suas famigeradas histórias libertinas. Apesar de toda precariedade do cárcere, longe de ser um ambiente propício à leitura e escrita, entre outros livros, o marquês teria lido com atenção O Príncipe (1532), de Maquiavel, L’Homme Machine (1748) de La Mettrie e O Sistema da Natureza (1770) de D’Holbach, apropriando-se das idéias materialistas promulgadas nessas obras para elaborar a sua posição. Jean Desbordes, que estudou a correspondência relacionada ao marquês durante sua reclusão, publicou as cartas que, em sua maioria, eram pedidos e solicitações endereçadas à sua esposa, ao seu procurador, às autoridades; sem referência direta à assuntos políticos ou filosóficos. Entretanto, Desbordes aponta um amadurecimento das idéias e evidencia uma crescente preocupação filosófica imbuída nas cartas.

Ainda segundo Desbordes, a correspondência do marquês ao final da vida revelaria uma posição irredutível no campo da idéias e convicções, indicada na vontade incessante de rescrever e publicar seus textos libertinos e pornográficos. Sobre seu longo período no cárcere, sua sobrevivência à condições muitas vezes insalubres e sua perseverança, o biógrafo Donald Thomas, diz que Sade "emergiu com o espírito intacto e uma chocante filosofia alternativa do comportamento humano que escrevera no longo período de sua reclusão" (Thomas, 1992: 10). Entre seus trabalhos mais representativos, aqui citados os títulos em francês e as datas de publicação, estão Les Cint Vingt Journées de Sodome (1782), Dialogue entre un prête et un moribond (1782), Justine, ou Les Infortunes de la Vertu (1791), Philosophie dans le Boudoir (1795), Aline et Valcour (1795), Juliette, ou Les Prospérités du Vice (1797), Les Crimes de l’amour (1801). Apesar de ter escritos outros textos e peças teatrais, sua reputação se encontraria nestes livros acima que fizeram sua (in)glória no século XVIII. Ciente das retaliações que poderiam suceder o marquês devido ao conteúdo dos seus romances, Sade publicava sob um nomme de plume e chegou a negar enfaticamente ser o autor de Justine para evitar a guilhotina. De fato, sua previsão confirmou-se, pois, de modo geral, os críticos dos séculos XVIII e XIX vilificaram a figura do marquês.

Em 1790 a roda da fortuna pareceu dar uma guinada, quando as forças revolucionárias o libertaram da pena imposta na lettre de cachet, assinada por Luís XVI o rei deposto. Em liberdade o marquês travou relações sociais que lhe proporcionaram uma recolocação vantajosa na sociedade, foi nomeado presidente da Section de Piques, espécie de distrito da cidade de Paris. Poderia ter aproveitado a oportunidade para vingar-se da família Montreuil, que tanto o fez padecer no cárcere, mas sublimou o desejo. Nesse período aproveitou para publicar os livros engendrados na cadeia e tentou emplacar algumas peças de teatro, que todavia não obtiveram muito sucesso. Mas novas conturbações o levam novamente à cadeia. Com alguma dignidade, enfim, Sade termina a vida, longevo, e supostamente sem remorsos nem culpas, no sanatório de Charenton em 1814.