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The Monk


These stipulations were very controlled by their boundaries and could not be exaggerated with out being broken. The Augustan critical attitude condemned spontaneity for its chaotic qualities, imagination for its objection to reason and liberalism for its opposition to traditionalism. .
             Gothic fiction appears as a specific response to the Age of Reason's order. During the late eighteenth-century, several different kinds of new fiction arose to challenge the Augustan tradition; leading the way was the Gothic novel. An interest in those things, which cannot be understood, for example religion and the soul, results in an overwhelming expansion of what is accepted as art in the literary world. No longer is literature responsible for explanation, but it now has the power to question. Where the classical was obsessed with order, the gothic exemplified chaos; where simple and pure, Gothic was ornate and lustful; where tradition was expected to be followed, the Gothic represented boundless exaggeration; and where reason was respected, imagination took hold. With the evolution of the Gothic novel, for the first time literature was perceived as limitless. In a literary context "Gothic" is most usually applied to a group of novels written between 1760 and 1820. Characteristics of the Gothic novel are: an emphasis on portraying the terrifying, insistence on archaic settings, a very prominent use of supernatural forces, the presence of highly stereotypical characters and an attempt to perfect the technique of literary suspense. Angela Carter most accurately defines Gothic, in her collection of tales "Fireworks": .
             "The Gothic tradition grandly ignores the value systems of our .
             institutions, it deals entirely with the profane. Its great themes .
             are incest and cannibalism. Character and events are exaggerated .
             beyond reality to become symbols, ideas and passions. Its style .
             will tend to be ornate, unnatural and thus operate against the .


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