Abstract

Before the 1960s, most studies of the Gothic merely made lists of conventions and then illustrated them by drawing on the novels of Horace Walpole, Matthew Lewis, Ann Radcliffe, and Clara Reeve. In contrast, more recent studies have looked behind the secret doors of the Gothic stage, attempting to shed light on the psychological meaning of such conventions as the dark interiors of castles and convents, and the ghost-haunted, misty vistas that surround them. In this vein, G.R. Thompson has defined a Gothic monomyth as part of dark Romanticism; Judith Wilt has traced a continuous Gothic tradition within England, while Elizabeth MacAndrew has traced one from the eighteenth century to the late twentieth; and increasingly critics such as Gilbert and Gubar, Norman Holland, and Ellen Moers have explored the Gothic in terms of women's psychology and social status