BLASZAK, Masek. Ann
Radcliffe’s Gothic Romances and the Romantic Revival.
Some Remarks on the origins of the Gothic Romance and
its status in Literary Criticism:
Bacon’s
Novum Organum (1620): reality continued
to the reasonable supported by his disciple Thomas Hobbes. This scientific
spirit, know in England as “age of understanding”, culminates with John Locke
and his Essays (1690) which dominated
most of the thinking in the 18th century. [empiricism, cartesianism
power of reason and the immutability in the order of nature represented the
main thought]
The
cultivation of rationality, clarity and simplicity, regularity, symmetry and
balance, restrain and discipline reached their climax in the writings of A.
Pope, representing English neo-classicism.
Rationalism
itself started doubling its own values by elevating the role of experience,
sensory perception. Locke made way to the relativism of reason and the
possibility that our ideas do not automatically verify the existence of
material objects. This was further explored by George Berkeley: A treatise concerning the principles of
human knowledge (1710).
