Early Nineteenth-Century Opera and the Impact of the Gothic

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the word "gothic" was used in a highly derogatory manner. By the end of the century, however, the ideas embodied in the word came to have aesthetic validity. When the second edition of Horace Walpole's novel, The Castle of Otranto, appeared in 1765, it was subtitled "A Gothic Story." Many of the trappings of Walpole's novel, such as the castle, the Medieval setting, and the concerns of a moribund aristocracy became standard features of gothic fiction, which reached its zenith of popularity in the 1790s. The gothic novel was calculated to induce terror: horror, confinement, paranoia, repression, sexual sadism, and the taboo were all basic to the genre.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Musicology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Willier, Stephen Ace

• Music
• Literature, English

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8803237

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/70860