Literary Movements: Gothic, New Historicism, and Structuralism

Gothic Literature

Gothic is an art style that emerged in Northern Europe. In literature, it suggests horror and mystery. As a novel, it usually describes natural forces and scenes of terror set in a dark castle haunted by ghosts, meant to be overcome by the hero or heroine.

It originated during the Romanticism movement in Germany and the United Kingdom in the 18th century, which explains its high content of subjectivity. As a literary genre, it reached its zenith at the end of that century and aimed to rediscover the connection between horror and ecstasy, along with reflections on death, considered the only way out of pain.

• Ann Radcliffe: Known for an observed and admired horror.
• M. Lewis: Focused on the essence that causes the reader to feel terrified.

New Historicism

New Historicism is a literary study whose goal is to understand intellectual history through literature, and literature through its cultural context. It is based on the idea that literature should be interpreted within its specific context, as plays, poems, and novels are products of a specific time and place.

This approach criticizes the practice of finding history outside of texts. New Historicism establishes reconstruction to represent a new reality by situating political, economic, and social happenings within it. It is based on the criticism of Stephen Greenblatt and the philosophy of Michel Foucault.

This study acknowledges that:

• A work is influenced by its author’s times and circumstances.
• The critic’s response is influenced by their own environment and beliefs.

Example: A New Historicist approach questions if Shakespeare was anti-Semitic in The Merchant of Venice, an answer found by judging the context in which the play was written.

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

Structuralism is a literary movement that defends the idea that literature is a fixed structure by placing the individual item in the wider structure to which it belongs. Before the 1950s, literature was studied in isolation from wider structures and contexts.

Structuralism has its origins in Ferdinand de Saussure, who suggested that meanings must be found in the structure of a whole language rather than in individual words. While Saussure’s central object of study was the language system, for structuralists, it is the literary system.

Structuralism focuses more on the connections that make meaning possible than on what a specific literary text means. Every literary work can be seen in relation to the system, taking into account literary genres and literature within the system of human culture.

Post-Structuralism

Post-Structuralism does not support the existence of underlying structures. It states that meanings are always influenced by their opposites, making interpretation a matter of viewpoints.