Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

"Present fears" and "Horrible Imaginings" : Gothic elements in Shakespearean Tragedy

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/b2773x94j

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  • Gothic literary works are characterized as such by their ability to represent and evoke terror. The form this representation takes is varied; often terror originates in the atmospheric effects of settings, in the appearance of mysterious, supposedly supernatural phenomena, and, perhaps most significantly, in the behavior of villainous characters. Shakespearean tragedy participates in just such an exploration of the origins and effects of terror. This thesis will examine three aspects of the Shakespearean Gothic in three of his most frightening and disturbing tragedies: Macbeth, King Lear and Titus Andronicus. All three of these texts represent terror in ways that are significant not only for genre studies but for historicist cultural studies as well. Shakespeare's particular vision of the terrible tends to represent unruly women and ethnic minorities as demonized others who threaten normalized social and moral order, and also evokes a religious dread--a fear of the cruelty or, more radically, the nonexistence of God--that would have proved particularly disturbing for Early Modem Christian culture. This reading of Shakespeare demonstrates both the influence of his vision on later writers and the trans-historic applicability of the Gothic aesthetic.
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