Monday, March 1, 2010
The Anti-Gothic
In the Preface, Wordsworth says that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (LB 175). I think this is a perfect description for the Gothic and Anti-Gothic genres, although the two genres, in my opinion, invoke much different feelings and emotions. In the Gothic genre we had death interacting with the supernatural, creating "pleasantly terrifying" experience as Jarrett and I described in our presentation of Alonzo the Brave. However, in the Anti-Gothic genre I found that the pleasant and suspenseful emotions I felt were replaced with feelings of sorrow and pity. In addition, the supernatural was replaced with the beauties of nature, making the poems illustrate a much more realistic view of death. I'm not sure if this is why these poems were called "Anti-Gothic," but that was my interpretation.
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I completely agree with this post - it articulates clearly the point I was trying to put forward in my own. Instead of the "pleasantly terrifying" aspects of the Gothic, Wordsworth gives us "sorrow and pity," as Panke puts it, as the backdrop of the poem. In "The Brothers," especially, we see the tragic without the invocation of the supernatural.
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