#the romantic agony

[chthonic-cassandra]

An anonymous individual asked @awildwickedslip for recommendations of literary criticism on the gothic, and she directed them to me, so I thought it was time I make a rec list on the topic.

I'm keep this to more general analyses, but of course have a lot of recommendations for more works on more specific texts (especially but not limited to Dracula).

I'm also including some things that are more properly about amatory or epistolary fiction, because I think an understanding of those genres will serve you well in contemplating the gothic.

Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony

Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves

Christy Desmet and Anne Williams (eds), Shakespearean Gothic

Kate Ferguson Ellis, The Contested Castle

David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror

Devendra P. Varma, The Gothic Flame

Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman

Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola

Elizabeth Cook, Epistolary Bodies

Jacqueline Howard, Readng Gothic Fiction: A Bakhtinian Approach

Toni Bowers, Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance

Peter Cryle, The Telling of the Act: Sexuality as Narrative in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France

Peter Cryle, Geometry in the Budoir: Configurations of French Erotic Narrative

Jalal Toufic, Vampire: An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film

Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and Literature

Marianne Noble, The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature

Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth Century Literature and the Invention of the Uncanny

[saintacephale]

Farida Khelfa in The Agony of Marguerite Gautier by Jean-Paul Goude, 1992

[thegirlthatcriesacademia]

Jane Austen was right when she said “I am half agony, half hope.”

[reddamselette]

Over time, Neil has heard of various things in relation to others. The red string theory, soulmates, everything has timing—he’s never once believed it. Not out of skepticism but more so, not wanting to put faith into something such as fate or divine intervention.

But it’s laughable now as Kevin introduces an old friend of his. Gray eyes, dark hair, French accent. Neil feels like he’s met him before, seen him somewhere or perhaps crossed him in passing.

Whatever it is, whatever it could be, Jean is somehow an important person in his life. And with whispers of a promise, of dreams, of another life—Neil decides he won’t let him go.

[justasthepoetssay]

People do change us. really.

People passed by me, passed through me, like the wind—unnoticed, unacknowledged. But you, you went through me, you fit right in me like a jigsaw puzzle, and you went on, you made me stop and think for a second, what just happened? I swear, I was changed, who was I before? who was I at that moment? who was I after? there was nothing before you, after you and like you. I no longer hated coffee, I started loving learning a new language and put everything in it, I chose a life inspired by you, I had four eyes now, two of mine, two of yours, I saw the world from your eyes and my eyes were fixed on you, couldn't take them off, not my fault. I began to love a place universally despised. I was contemplating actions that could unravel everything—and eventually, they did. Today, I stand here, ruined, different, both for you and because of you. Do you ever think of what have you done to me?

-based on real events

[rewritingcanon]

no because the snily dynamic has so much untapped angst because everyone always chalks it up to “snape called her a slur” when that was only the breaking point. for years snape was betraying lily with the friends he was making in school and for years she stood by him because she loved him the most. she still saw him as the know-it-all, sensitive, momma’s boy she befriended before hogwarts ruined him and wanted to believe in his goodness. and on the flip side snape could see that lily was trying not to like james and his charisma for his sake but that wasn’t enough!! she shouldn’t have to try not to like him because james was a monster! her flaws were that she was trying to be a better person than she was, but he wanted to believe in her too until the point where he realised his friendship with her wasn’t going to save him!! the only ones that could were the people that stood against her entire existence and in that moment he committed the ultimate betrayal and spent the rest of his life regretting it!!! ughhhhhh aghhhh uhhhhh

[thehermitsacedia]

Le sang coule à longs flots de sa poitrine ouverte ; En vain il a des mers fouillé la profondeur ; L'océan était vide et la plage déserte ; Pour toute nourriture il apporte son cœur. […] Et, regardant couler sa sanglante mamelle, Sur son festin de mort il s'affaisse et chancelle, Ivre de volupté, de tendresse et d'horreur.

The blood runs in slow waves from his open chest In vain has he plumbed the depths of the seas The Ocean is empty and the shore deserted To provide food for all he offers his heart. […] And, watching his bloody breast drop On his death-feast he sinks and staggers Drunk on pleasure, on tenderness and horror.

-Alfred de Musset, La Nuit de Mai

[normystical]

ATTENTION ALL ALASTOR SHIPPERS: 

uniromantic 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. PROCEED

[sesamestreep]

“requiem for methuselah” crazy ass episode for many reasons. Kirk is being fully insane, like I don’t actually think, even controlling for how quickly and easily and readily he seems to fall in love with anybody at the slightest encouragement, that he’d go that bonkers for that android woman he just met while everyone on the ship was this close to dying, but that’s neither here nor there, because in the background you’ve got an equally but much more subtly insane episode for Spock, who extremely uncharacteristically admits to experiencing an emotion (or nearly experiencing, whatever) and that emotion is ENVY of all things. And then spends the rest of the episode warning Kirk away from this new love interest (something that doesn’t usually happen, even when Kirk has very inadvisable love interests) and is, in the end, the person who accurately identifies that Rayna’s competing love for Kirk and Flint is ultimately what overwhelms and destroys her with the most killer line in maybe history???

And then to wrap it up we get an equally uncharacteristic sort of denouement scene (TOS loooves to cut an episode off right after the actual climax, leaving little time for falling action or character reflection, or to stick a sitcom-y button on the end where the gang all smiles and laughs at their misadventures and everything resets to zero, which is not a criticism, it’s just the style of that era of tv, honestly) where Kirk is literally miserable over Rayna’s death (again, kind of unusual for a lot of his love interests, he tends to be able to move on pretty quickly) and Spock goes to see him and he falls asleep right in front of Spock (also odd) and then when Bones comes in to give the final word on Flint, Spock waves him off from waking the Captain (tender) and Bones gives him that awful speech about how it’s sadder that Spock can’t even imagine the love Kirk felt for this random android woman than it is that Kirk lost her in the first place (debatable but also rude) and how his great tragedy is that he can’t love at all like they can and how all he wishes is that Kirk could forget about all of this and move on. AND THEN, to have Bones leave and Spock go over to Kirk and very gently, tenderly, reluctantly touch him and put his hand to his forehead and tell him to forget and HAVE THAT BE THE END OF THE EPISODE??? What am I supposed to do with that??

[chthonic-cassandra]

So. What is with broken tea cups in gothic adjacent media?

[existingillusion]

[robertwaltons]

behold: the doomed unrequited waltonstein manifesto courtesy of twitter user ustfile

[notverycreativeblog]

[simply-whump]

Dr Romantic 3 : Episode 10

>> Whump List

[mylove-thresher]

What illegal downloads from sketchy websites and someone you miss leads to

[thelonelynindroid]

Trobed I drew through genuine tears while i had a 24 hr migraine and my good old pal dys for ya 👍