Gothic Literature Historical Context

This Study Guide consists of approximately 48 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Gothic Literature.

Gothic Literature Historical Context

This Study Guide consists of approximately 48 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Gothic Literature.
This section contains 989 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Gothic Literature Study Guide

The Enlightenment

Many historians and scholars attribute the rise of the Gothic as a response to the prevailing mode of rational thought and reason. Indeed, eighteenthcentury thought was dominated by an intellectual movement called the enlightenment by later historians. Enlightenment philosophers and writers privileged reason and human understanding above emotions and feelings. Furthermore, the rise of experimental science during this period offered an empirical model for how one could arrive at truth.

A secular movement, the Enlightenment strove to demonstrate that knowledge could only be derived from science and natural philosophy, not from religion. Indeed, religion and spirituality, particularly Catholicism, were relegated to the realm of the "irrational." Enlightenment philosophers steadfastly believed that only through attention to rationality, reason, and balance could humankind improve. The thinkers of the Enlightenment looked for their models to the classical period of Greece and Rome, rejecting what they saw as the "barbarism...

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This section contains 989 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Gothic Literature Study Guide
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Gothic Literature from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.