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Thick Description and the Poetics of the Liminal in Gothic Tales
Author(s) -
Aguirre Manuel
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12138
Subject(s) - liminality , poetics , folklore , literature , reading (process) , set (abstract data type) , history , aesthetics , art , epistemology , philosophy , linguistics , poetry , computer science , programming language
The article proposes a formal approach to the study of Gothic fiction, understood historically as that genre of horror literature which ran its course between the 1760s and the 1820s. The article holds that Gothic emerged and developed halfway between folklore and literature, and employed formal strategies analogous to the ‘anti‐structure’ devices that anthropologist Victor Turner detected in the liminal stage of rites of passage. It argues that a proper analysis of the genre requires a ‘thick’ description, a kind of close reading that takes into account both formal aspects and compositional conventions. Analysis shows that Gothic writers implement a number of construction strategies that can ultimately be tracked down to a set of binding ‘rules’ shaping and governing the genre. The article outlines and illustrates six such rules and argues that they provide a liminal poetics for the genre, that is, a poetics central to which stands a decisive concern with thresholds and with the ambiguities, paradoxes and dangers entailed by crossing, entering or occupying them.