Religion: An instrument to critique Slavery

As I read these emblematic pieces of the Supernatural horror and Realist gothic literary genres, it is very interesting to see the way Religion is utilized in comparison to Walpole's Castle of Otranto and other Gothic horror pieces. Unlike in Walpole's novel, religion here is not used as an intrument to question its very own institutions, it is used as a very stable institution to attack the slave trade. In Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" especially, Religion is not used as a literary device to overlap the supernatural and the natural realms. In fact, it is used to get rid of the supernatural and gothic that exists within the slave trade itself. One of the paintings we focused on today in the presentation really exemplifies this relationship between religion and nature. They work together to illuminate the atrocious aspects of society and the slave trade, specifically. It would be interesting to delineate how the gothic is changing in the way it is manipulated to portray slavery as the horrible. Religion is definitely one way in which the genre shifts its attention on religion itself and applies religious rhetoric to the social climate of 18th century.