0:00:09 > 0:00:12What is Gothic?
0:00:12 > 0:00:17A word that implies the sinister, the supernatural, horror.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22It's also a medieval style of building,
0:00:22 > 0:00:25sacred architecture dedicated to the glory of God.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30How did one word come to have such different meanings?
0:00:32 > 0:00:37The term "Gothic" was coined by the artists of the Italian Renaissance
0:00:37 > 0:00:38as an insult.
0:00:38 > 0:00:42They used it to describe anything that did not come from the civilised
0:00:42 > 0:00:44worlds of ancient Greece and Rome.
0:00:44 > 0:00:48It meant barbaric, wild, gloomy.
0:00:48 > 0:00:52With one word, they dismissed centuries of medieval art
0:00:52 > 0:00:56and architecture as primitive and worthless.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07The Middle Ages produced some of our most spectacular cathedrals
0:01:07 > 0:01:08and churches.
0:01:09 > 0:01:11They contained visions of heaven...
0:01:13 > 0:01:15..and warnings of hell.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22But the Protestant Reformation swept away the medieval world,
0:01:22 > 0:01:26and for nearly three centuries the language of Gothic art
0:01:26 > 0:01:31and architecture was rejected as Catholic superstition -
0:01:31 > 0:01:34until the Georgians fell back in love with it.
0:01:36 > 0:01:40At first, they used it to declare that every Englishman's home
0:01:40 > 0:01:42is his castle.
0:01:43 > 0:01:45But Gothic grew like ivy.
0:01:47 > 0:01:49It spawned new forms of literature...
0:01:50 > 0:01:52..new types of painting...
0:01:55 > 0:01:57..a new taste for terror...
0:02:01 > 0:02:02..and weirdness.
0:02:04 > 0:02:07It's no coincidence that Gothic marked a midnight moment
0:02:07 > 0:02:09in British history,
0:02:10 > 0:02:13when all kinds of terrors WERE going bump in the night.
0:02:15 > 0:02:17Abroad, revolution in France.
0:02:19 > 0:02:24At home, new industry, with its dark satanic mills...
0:02:26 > 0:02:29..new science, with its Frankenstein menace.
0:02:30 > 0:02:35The British could hardly bear to talk about such things out loud.
0:02:35 > 0:02:38Gothic allowed them to whisper their deepest desires
0:02:38 > 0:02:41and their darkest fears.
0:02:45 > 0:02:49Read them right, and I believe the stones of Gothic revival
0:02:49 > 0:02:54architecture, the terrors painted by Gothic painters, and the words
0:02:54 > 0:02:58of the great Gothic novelists, amount to nothing less than a secret
0:02:58 > 0:03:03history of Britain itself during its greatest age of change.
0:03:34 > 0:03:36SCREAMING
0:03:36 > 0:03:39Oh, my lord! My lord, we are all undone.
0:03:41 > 0:03:46Villain! Monster! Sorcerer! 'Tis thou hast slain my son.
0:03:47 > 0:03:49What sound was that?
0:03:49 > 0:03:54Do I dream? Or are the devils themselves in league against me?
0:03:54 > 0:03:56Speak, infernal spectre.
0:04:02 > 0:04:04Horace Walpole's The Castle Of Otranto,
0:04:04 > 0:04:09first published in 1764, the very first Gothic novel.
0:04:09 > 0:04:11Immensely popular, ran into many editions -
0:04:11 > 0:04:15this is my own personal copy, published in 1830 with these
0:04:15 > 0:04:18rather charming steel plate engravings.
0:04:18 > 0:04:22It's not actually a great book. It's rather badly written, very playful.
0:04:22 > 0:04:27But it's remarkably forward looking, in the sense that
0:04:27 > 0:04:31everything else in Gothic fiction comes from this. It's all here.
0:04:31 > 0:04:34Haunted castles,
0:04:34 > 0:04:36strange apparitions...
0:04:38 > 0:04:45..tyrannical villains under the impulse of some nameless lust.
0:04:45 > 0:04:47This really is the book that launched a thousand
0:04:47 > 0:04:49Gothic horror fantasies.
0:04:52 > 0:04:57The book's author, Horace Walpole, was an eccentric literary wit -
0:04:57 > 0:05:01a kind of aristocratic, Georgian Oscar Wilde.
0:05:01 > 0:05:04Centuries before Hammer horror movies were even dreamed of,
0:05:04 > 0:05:09The Castle Of Otranto told the story of an evil lord,
0:05:09 > 0:05:12cursed by the dark deeds of his ancestors.
0:05:12 > 0:05:16He stops at nothing to try and outwit the curse.
0:05:16 > 0:05:19But a monstrous suit of armour begins to haunt
0:05:19 > 0:05:22the increasingly deranged tyrant.
0:05:22 > 0:05:24Try as he might to escape,
0:05:24 > 0:05:28the ghostly armour closes in on him, inexorably.
0:05:30 > 0:05:34In the end, it defeats the tyrant and destroys the castle walls.
0:05:37 > 0:05:41The book's 18th-century readers swooned. Pulses raced.
0:05:46 > 0:05:49Now, Horace Walpole didn't actually publish the first edition
0:05:49 > 0:05:51of The Castle Of Otranto under his own name.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55The name on the title page was that of William Marshal -
0:05:55 > 0:05:58himself supposedly the mere translator
0:05:58 > 0:06:00of an ancient medieval document.
0:06:00 > 0:06:05Now, Gothic literature would come to specialise in these guilty
0:06:05 > 0:06:08disavowals - a number of Gothic novels were published
0:06:08 > 0:06:10by writers who claimed they were merely discoveries,
0:06:10 > 0:06:12books they hadn't written themselves.
0:06:12 > 0:06:16It's as if the Gothic text had to arrive with the general
0:06:16 > 0:06:19public accompanied by an alibi - "I didn't really write it."
0:06:19 > 0:06:24Gothic fiction was the fiction of shame, written by an author
0:06:24 > 0:06:29who, it seems, almost as soon as the work was done, wished to disappear.
0:06:35 > 0:06:39The most important character in Walpole's novel is the castle
0:06:39 > 0:06:43itself - a perfect metaphor for the darker recesses
0:06:43 > 0:06:46of the apparently rational Georgian psyche.
0:06:49 > 0:06:53So let's explore it - penetrate each secret room
0:06:53 > 0:06:58and winding passage, to reveal a full picture of Gothic.
0:07:01 > 0:07:06To begin with, what drove Walpole to write his strange tale?
0:07:08 > 0:07:11The answer to that lies behind our first door.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20Horace Walpole, Eton and Cambridge educated,
0:07:20 > 0:07:23son of the first Prime Minister,
0:07:23 > 0:07:28was part of the Establishment, yet never quite won its full approval.
0:07:32 > 0:07:36The most telling insight we have into his character
0:07:36 > 0:07:39is the house he built at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham.
0:07:42 > 0:07:44Like his Gothic novel, it's a
0:07:44 > 0:07:47theatrical reinterpretation of the past,
0:07:47 > 0:07:49a pseudo-medieval stage set,
0:07:49 > 0:07:52utterly unlike any other building of its day.
0:07:53 > 0:07:57It speaks of a man with a strong tendency to go against the grain.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07Horace Walpole was tremendously proud of Strawberry Hill.
0:08:07 > 0:08:09He had descriptions of the house printed,
0:08:09 > 0:08:12he loved taking visitors round.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15It was clearly a statement, this building.
0:08:15 > 0:08:17But what was it a statement of?
0:08:17 > 0:08:21A great white Gothic meringue built on the outskirts of London.
0:08:21 > 0:08:24Well, I think location was important.
0:08:24 > 0:08:27The building was outside the centre of things,
0:08:27 > 0:08:29rather like Walpole himself.
0:08:29 > 0:08:32I think this building symbolised, to him,
0:08:32 > 0:08:35an Englishman's right to be rather unusual.
0:08:35 > 0:08:38I think Lytton Strachey got it dead right
0:08:38 > 0:08:42when he said that what Horace loved about the Gothic style
0:08:42 > 0:08:46was not its beauty, but the fact that it was a bit queer.
0:08:49 > 0:08:52Walpole was not the marrying kind.
0:08:52 > 0:08:56His letters reveal a string of passions for other men.
0:08:58 > 0:09:01Whether consummated or not, we'll never know,
0:09:01 > 0:09:05but it's telling that just before he wrote The Castle Of Otranto,
0:09:05 > 0:09:08he was vilified in the press for an allegedly inappropriate
0:09:08 > 0:09:12affair with his cousin, the MP Henry Conway.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18It's hard not to project Walpole's undoubtedly troubled
0:09:18 > 0:09:20state of mind onto the creation of his novel.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29Walpole claimed that the idea for The Castle Of Otranto
0:09:29 > 0:09:31came to him in a dream.
0:09:31 > 0:09:35He found himself in a great Gothic stairwell, much like this one,
0:09:35 > 0:09:41when he suddenly saw a monstrous disembodied hand in armour.
0:09:42 > 0:09:44Strange image,
0:09:44 > 0:09:49suggesting nameless motives,
0:09:49 > 0:09:52perhaps the threat of punishment.
0:09:52 > 0:09:56Right from the beginning, Gothic was a form cloaked in mystery.
0:10:02 > 0:10:06But Walpole never meant HIS Gothic to be taken too seriously.
0:10:07 > 0:10:11There's something playful, even slightly subversive about
0:10:11 > 0:10:12The Castle Of Otranto,
0:10:12 > 0:10:16a quality that's vividly reflected in his Gothic house.
0:10:18 > 0:10:21Walpole claimed he designed Strawberry Hill to create
0:10:21 > 0:10:26a sense of what he named "Gloomth", his own invented word for
0:10:26 > 0:10:30the brooding atmosphere of crumbling medieval castles and abbeys.
0:10:32 > 0:10:37Yet in truth, it was a rather polite, refined sort of Gothic.
0:10:37 > 0:10:40It was gaily painted, and crammed with portraits,
0:10:40 > 0:10:43antique trinkets, busts -
0:10:43 > 0:10:46and, of course, a giant suit of armour.
0:10:51 > 0:10:54Strawberry Hill's been largely denuded of Walpole's
0:10:54 > 0:10:57extensive collection of antiquarian objects
0:10:57 > 0:11:00and medieval curiosities, so nowadays the house is
0:11:00 > 0:11:02very much a shell.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05But what a splendid shell, and here in the Great Gallery,
0:11:05 > 0:11:10you can really appreciate the lightness of the effect.
0:11:10 > 0:11:14This is almost Gothic as if created from spun sugar.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17And I think Walpole approached the whole creation of this house
0:11:17 > 0:11:21very much in the manner of an exuberant amateur chef.
0:11:21 > 0:11:25Let's start with some vaulting borrowed from Henry VII's chapel
0:11:25 > 0:11:29in Westminster Abbey, stir in a few finials, add some mirrors
0:11:29 > 0:11:34and then finish with a light sprinkling of stained glass.
0:11:34 > 0:11:36It almost looks good enough to eat.
0:11:41 > 0:11:44Strawberry Hill WAS light-hearted, but it was also
0:11:44 > 0:11:46daringly unconventional.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50Many of Walpole's contemporaries were shocked by it.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54An English nobleman, living in a house that evoked a Catholic church?
0:11:58 > 0:12:01Everyone knew that the English aristocracy were supposed to live
0:12:01 > 0:12:05in houses built in a very different architectural style.
0:12:06 > 0:12:10Surely THEY would never open their doors to Gothic.
0:12:10 > 0:12:12Or would they?
0:12:22 > 0:12:26The 18th century was the age of reason,
0:12:26 > 0:12:29when powerful men built grand country estates
0:12:29 > 0:12:33like Stowe House in Buckinghamshire, using the neat symmetry
0:12:33 > 0:12:37and clean lines of an imported architectural style,
0:12:37 > 0:12:38the very opposite of Gothic.
0:12:40 > 0:12:44The English aristocracy built their great houses in the classical style
0:12:44 > 0:12:49because it perfectly expressed their pride,
0:12:49 > 0:12:52their sense of their own magnificence, their sense
0:12:52 > 0:12:57of moral values, constructing these enormous pillared and pedimented
0:12:57 > 0:13:02structures, more temples and palaces than domestic residences.
0:13:02 > 0:13:07This was their way of saying that they were the true inheritors
0:13:07 > 0:13:12of the values of ancient Greece and the power of ancient Rome.
0:13:12 > 0:13:15They were the masters of a new Empire.
0:13:20 > 0:13:23Stowe House exemplifies the Georgian obsession with Greek
0:13:23 > 0:13:25and Roman styles of architecture.
0:13:27 > 0:13:31In the 1720s, its owner, Lord Cobham, military hero turned
0:13:31 > 0:13:35politician, followed fashion by remodelling his ancestral home.
0:13:38 > 0:13:40He added porticos, and columns.
0:13:40 > 0:13:43And he embellished his estate with classical temples,
0:13:43 > 0:13:47to virtue and to wisdom.
0:13:51 > 0:13:55But while aristocrats like Cobham idolised ancient Mediterranean
0:13:55 > 0:13:58culture, they were surrounded everywhere by the crumbling remains
0:13:58 > 0:14:01of their own British history.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08Across the country, ruined abbeys and monasteries were
0:14:08 > 0:14:11reminders of a vanished past,
0:14:11 > 0:14:13swept away two centuries before
0:14:13 > 0:14:16by Henry VIII and the fiercely Protestant Church of England.
0:14:20 > 0:14:24It was a cultural cataclysm, that had decimated not just
0:14:24 > 0:14:26the indigenous Catholic church,
0:14:26 > 0:14:29but art, architecture,
0:14:29 > 0:14:31and an entire way of life.
0:14:37 > 0:14:41At Stowe House, Lord Cobham may have been an Enlightenment lover
0:14:41 > 0:14:43of classical reason and logic.
0:14:45 > 0:14:49But he also understood that the universe always has another side.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52Light and dark, virtue and vice,
0:14:52 > 0:14:55order and liberty -
0:14:55 > 0:14:57opposing forces in creative tension.
0:15:02 > 0:15:08So he turned to Britain's distant past, to the language of Gothic,
0:15:08 > 0:15:12to create a building that conveyed his ideas about freedom.
0:15:12 > 0:15:16This was a man who was proud of his Anglo-Saxon roots.
0:15:19 > 0:15:24Stowe's Temple of Liberty, perched on the brow of a hill
0:15:24 > 0:15:28in the rolling English countryside, is more than one of the first
0:15:28 > 0:15:33architectural expressions of a revived taste for the Gothic.
0:15:33 > 0:15:36It's also an important political statement.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40Whigs like Lord Cobham idolised their ancient forebears
0:15:40 > 0:15:43the Anglo-Saxons, because they saw in the workings
0:15:43 > 0:15:46of the ancient Anglo-Saxon witan, or council,
0:15:46 > 0:15:48a model for the workings of Parliament
0:15:48 > 0:15:52and therefore the opposite of rule by an absolute monarch.
0:15:52 > 0:15:57This was indeed a temple to English liberty.
0:15:57 > 0:16:01But it was liberty seen from a very aristocratic viewpoint.
0:16:01 > 0:16:04Let's not forget that to create his grand house,
0:16:04 > 0:16:07his wonderful garden dotted with temples,
0:16:07 > 0:16:09Lord Cobham had to demolish several villages
0:16:09 > 0:16:12and displace their inhabitants.
0:16:16 > 0:16:21Cobham's folly was an attempt by a hugely privileged landowner
0:16:21 > 0:16:25to tether the meaning of Gothic to his own political agenda.
0:16:25 > 0:16:28It helped to fuel an aristocratic fashion.
0:16:31 > 0:16:35Whimsical Gothic follies, eccentric medieval novelties,
0:16:35 > 0:16:40designed to decorate sprawling country estates, and affirm
0:16:40 > 0:16:45the rather limited libertarian beliefs of a powerful group of men.
0:16:48 > 0:16:52In the Midlands, the folly took on a new form,
0:16:52 > 0:16:54the ivy-clad ruin,
0:16:54 > 0:16:58made to LOOK as if it had been decaying for centuries.
0:17:00 > 0:17:04The fake crumbling castle at Hagley Hall was built
0:17:04 > 0:17:08not in the Middle Ages but in 1747, for the fervent Whig
0:17:08 > 0:17:09Lord Lyttelton.
0:17:12 > 0:17:16It's another Gothic folly designed to proclaim aristocratic power.
0:17:22 > 0:17:25But the sham ruin also sparked a wider,
0:17:25 > 0:17:29more democratic taste for REAL ruins.
0:17:29 > 0:17:32After all, real ruins could be appreciated by anyone with
0:17:32 > 0:17:34walking boots and a set of watercolours.
0:17:39 > 0:17:42Budding artists scoured the land for picturesque abbeys
0:17:42 > 0:17:44exposed to the sky.
0:17:48 > 0:17:50The love of ruins became a cult,
0:17:50 > 0:17:53and with it, developed a kind of Gothic philosophy.
0:17:57 > 0:18:00Writers such as Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey
0:18:00 > 0:18:02took ruins as the starting point for melancholy
0:18:02 > 0:18:07reflections on the transience of all human societies and civilisations.
0:18:07 > 0:18:10And the cult of ruins fed naturally into the cult of nature,
0:18:10 > 0:18:14for what is a ruin but a building that has been overgrown,
0:18:14 > 0:18:18overtaken by the great forces of the natural world?
0:18:18 > 0:18:20What began as a Gothic folly
0:18:20 > 0:18:24came to stand as one of the enduring symbols of the romantic imagination.
0:18:33 > 0:18:37The new taste for Gothic ruins in a landscape
0:18:37 > 0:18:41fostered new ways of seeing landscape itself -
0:18:41 > 0:18:43a new approach to the natural world.
0:18:55 > 0:18:57Travellers from Britain to Italy had, for many centuries,
0:18:57 > 0:18:59passed through the Alps.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03But it was only in the 18th century that they began to admire
0:19:03 > 0:19:07the mountains, rather than see them simply as a barrier.
0:19:10 > 0:19:15In Britain too, at places like the dramatic Gordale Scar in Yorkshire,
0:19:15 > 0:19:20landscape began to inspire thrilling new feelings of awe and dread.
0:19:22 > 0:19:26The melancholy taste for Gothic ruins went hand in hand
0:19:26 > 0:19:29with a new taste for the wilder faces of nature.
0:19:29 > 0:19:34Barren mountains, desolate ravines, torrents, waterfalls,
0:19:34 > 0:19:37great cliff faces that seem almost as though
0:19:37 > 0:19:40they're about to topple and crush you.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43The Earl of Shaftesbury had written of HIS emotions in front
0:19:43 > 0:19:46of such scenes, saying they reminded him
0:19:46 > 0:19:49of the violence of the world, the indifference of nature,
0:19:49 > 0:19:53the inevitability of the end of civilisation itself.
0:19:53 > 0:19:56But it was Edmund Burke
0:19:56 > 0:20:00who gave this new taste for wild nature a name.
0:20:00 > 0:20:03He called it "the sublime".
0:20:08 > 0:20:11Burke defined the sublime as that which excites
0:20:11 > 0:20:16sensations of terror, the most powerful of our emotions.
0:20:17 > 0:20:21He also pointed out that sublime nature is best enjoyed
0:20:21 > 0:20:22at a distance.
0:20:23 > 0:20:25Perfect for painting.
0:20:30 > 0:20:35We can marvel at James Ward's vertiginous Gordale Scar,
0:20:35 > 0:20:38because we know painted rocks can't crush us.
0:20:42 > 0:20:46We can relish the dread of Philip de Loutherbourg's travellers,
0:20:46 > 0:20:50caught in an avalanche, because WE'VE been spared.
0:20:52 > 0:20:57And we can thrill at Turner's alpine storm, because WE can't be touched.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05Sublime landscape has this in common with Gothic terror tales.
0:21:05 > 0:21:09It gives us the frisson of danger without the risk.
0:21:14 > 0:21:15Through the lens of the sublime
0:21:15 > 0:21:18the Georgians began to see old paintings afresh.
0:21:21 > 0:21:24Italian artist Salvator Rosa died long before the revived
0:21:24 > 0:21:27fashion for all things Gothic.
0:21:27 > 0:21:31Yet his paintings seem to have predicted the taste for the sublime.
0:21:35 > 0:21:41Glowering skies, gnarled trees, craggy cliffs.
0:21:42 > 0:21:45The Georgians were bewitched.
0:21:45 > 0:21:47They bought up as many of his works as they could
0:21:47 > 0:21:49and shipped them back to England.
0:21:58 > 0:22:01The National Gallery in London now holds one of Rosa's
0:22:01 > 0:22:03most unusual pictures.
0:22:05 > 0:22:09It's a sublime landscape, but with a difference.
0:22:09 > 0:22:11It's filled with monstrous figures,
0:22:11 > 0:22:14as if straight from a Gothic nightmare.
0:22:19 > 0:22:22Salvator Rosa's Witches At Their Incantations,
0:22:22 > 0:22:25a witches' brew of a painting.
0:22:25 > 0:22:27He's lit it as if by flashes of lightning
0:22:27 > 0:22:30and that's how the eye experiences it - not as a composition
0:22:30 > 0:22:34but as a series of sudden horrific visions.
0:22:34 > 0:22:36A crone and her accomplice.
0:22:36 > 0:22:40They've resurrected a skeleton from the grave, they've dug him up
0:22:40 > 0:22:42and the coffin's been opened.
0:22:42 > 0:22:46A witch and her sinister companion seem to be getting him
0:22:46 > 0:22:47to write something.
0:22:47 > 0:22:50Are they making him rewrite his will in their favour?
0:22:50 > 0:22:54Immediately to the right, suddenly, again, another flash.
0:22:54 > 0:22:58A naked, beautiful witch who's got a voodoo doll, balanced
0:22:58 > 0:23:00in front of a mirror.
0:23:00 > 0:23:03Tsshhh! Another flash.
0:23:03 > 0:23:07An older witch, grinding up entrails for a potion...
0:23:07 > 0:23:08Tsshhh!
0:23:08 > 0:23:11A knight being beaten by a broomstick as he sets
0:23:11 > 0:23:17fire to a rabbit on a piece of paper on which a spell has been written.
0:23:17 > 0:23:21There's a heart, impaled on a sword -
0:23:21 > 0:23:26Tsshhh! ..a baby being held up for sacrifice.
0:23:26 > 0:23:31The monster of a skeleton bird that seems to have come to life.
0:23:31 > 0:23:36Another witch arriving on some weird creature of the night,
0:23:36 > 0:23:39and at the centre of it all,
0:23:39 > 0:23:42a hanged man with a distended neck
0:23:42 > 0:23:44being fumigated
0:23:44 > 0:23:50while a witch cuts his toenails to put them in her potion.
0:23:50 > 0:23:56What on earth, what in hell, did Salvator Rosa mean by it all?
0:23:56 > 0:24:00Well, he was a cynical, sardonic, philosophical man,
0:24:00 > 0:24:04not much given to superstition, and this was probably,
0:24:04 > 0:24:09in 1646, his way of saying to his witch-hunting contemporaries,
0:24:09 > 0:24:12"Do you really think this kind of thing
0:24:12 > 0:24:15"goes on in the landscape outside Naples?
0:24:15 > 0:24:17"I don't think so."
0:24:17 > 0:24:21But that begs the question of why, more than 100 years later,
0:24:21 > 0:24:25English gentlemen of the Georgian age, such as Earl Spencer,
0:24:25 > 0:24:28who hung this picture at Althorp,
0:24:28 > 0:24:31why on earth would THEY have wanted
0:24:31 > 0:24:36to contemplate Salvator Rosa's feverish fancies?
0:24:36 > 0:24:39Well, I wonder if it isn't precisely because they WERE
0:24:39 > 0:24:44Georgian gentlemen living in the age of the Enlightenment, a time when
0:24:44 > 0:24:47religion seems to have held less and less sway,
0:24:47 > 0:24:51and when the old folklorish fantasies and superstitions
0:24:51 > 0:24:52were all but dead.
0:24:52 > 0:24:56Didn't they want to re-enchant their world?
0:24:57 > 0:25:00To fill it once more with the frisson of horror?
0:25:02 > 0:25:06Is that perhaps what Gothic was all about?
0:25:14 > 0:25:18Fascinated by witchcraft and all things medieval,
0:25:18 > 0:25:23the Georgians also stirred the cauldron of their own literary past.
0:25:23 > 0:25:28There they found an almost forgotten writer, a playwright -
0:25:28 > 0:25:30William Shakespeare.
0:25:30 > 0:25:32Born within living memory of the Reformation,
0:25:32 > 0:25:37he was like a stepping stone back to an earlier medieval world,
0:25:37 > 0:25:41his plays full of the supernatural and the strange.
0:25:41 > 0:25:46Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest -
0:25:46 > 0:25:49all steeped in the atmosphere of Gothic.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
0:25:56 > 0:25:59Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
0:26:00 > 0:26:05Ghosts, wandering here and there, troop home to churchyards,
0:26:05 > 0:26:07damned spirits all.
0:26:08 > 0:26:12When shall we three meet again?
0:26:12 > 0:26:16In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
0:26:21 > 0:26:24Shakespeare answered a need for the magical, the visionary.
0:26:26 > 0:26:29The Georgians republished him, performed him,
0:26:29 > 0:26:33dedicated festivals, galleries and paintings to his plays.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39Why does Shakespeare exert such a powerful hold
0:26:39 > 0:26:42on the 18th-century Gothic imagination?
0:26:42 > 0:26:46Well, I think it's because to them,
0:26:46 > 0:26:49it seems as though his language springs
0:26:49 > 0:26:52from the very soil of old England.
0:26:52 > 0:26:55Reading him, it's as if they can hear, see, touch, taste
0:26:55 > 0:26:59and smell the lost world of the Middle Ages.
0:27:00 > 0:27:02He gives them the old superstitions,
0:27:02 > 0:27:03the old folklore -
0:27:03 > 0:27:07omens, ghosts, witches prancing on a hillside.
0:27:07 > 0:27:11More than that, he gives them proud kings brought low by the fates -
0:27:11 > 0:27:13"O, let me not be mad."
0:27:14 > 0:27:17"To be, or not to be, that is the question."
0:27:17 > 0:27:20"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"
0:27:20 > 0:27:25He takes us inside the minds of his characters as no other writer.
0:27:28 > 0:27:31But above all the Georgians idolised Shakespeare
0:27:31 > 0:27:35because he was so irregular - he broke all the rules.
0:27:37 > 0:27:40Shakespeare wrote comedies that turn into tragedies,
0:27:40 > 0:27:43tragedies that turn into comedies.
0:27:43 > 0:27:48He was no-one's servant - he was his own master.
0:27:48 > 0:27:51And what could be more British than that?
0:27:55 > 0:27:59Shakespeare also inspired 18th-century melancholics,
0:27:59 > 0:28:02lamenting all that had been lost during the Reformation.
0:28:07 > 0:28:08In one of his sonnets
0:28:08 > 0:28:10Shakespeare had spoken of the spiritual void
0:28:10 > 0:28:13left by Britain's sacked monasteries -
0:28:13 > 0:28:16"Bare, ruin'd choirs, where once the sweet birds sang."
0:28:19 > 0:28:24From that one line, an entire school of 18th-century poetry would grow.
0:28:27 > 0:28:33In 1721, an Anglo-Irish clergyman called Thomas Parnell
0:28:33 > 0:28:38wrote a short poem entitled A Night Piece On Death.
0:28:38 > 0:28:40Full of Shakespearean echoes,
0:28:40 > 0:28:41it was a reflection
0:28:41 > 0:28:45on the inevitability of the passing of every human life.
0:28:45 > 0:28:49Like a medieval memento mori, it was meant to remind us
0:28:49 > 0:28:52that despite all our efforts and ambitions, all our quests
0:28:52 > 0:28:56for knowledge, there's one lesson that trumps them all.
0:28:56 > 0:28:59And as if to force that lesson home,
0:28:59 > 0:29:03Parnell had the dead themselves rising from their graves.
0:29:08 > 0:29:11The bursting Earth unveiled the Shades!
0:29:11 > 0:29:14All slow and wan and wrap'd with shrouds.
0:29:16 > 0:29:18They rise in visionary crouds,
0:29:18 > 0:29:21And all with sober accent cry,
0:29:21 > 0:29:24"Think, Mortal, what it is to die."
0:29:28 > 0:29:31Thomas Parnell is now almost forgotten.
0:29:31 > 0:29:35But his verse anticipated a whole generation of English writers
0:29:35 > 0:29:38we now call the Graveyard Poets.
0:29:40 > 0:29:42Like Parnell, they often preached a sombre
0:29:42 > 0:29:45moral message about the inevitability of death.
0:29:47 > 0:29:50But they drew on the same supernatural language
0:29:50 > 0:29:51as the Gothic novel,
0:29:51 > 0:29:54with its lurid, graphic imagery.
0:29:59 > 0:30:04Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird...
0:30:04 > 0:30:07Rook'd in the spire, screams loud!
0:30:09 > 0:30:14From the low vaults, the mansions of the dead roused from their slumbers
0:30:14 > 0:30:18In grim array, the grisly spectres rise.
0:30:24 > 0:30:27What does it signify at a deeper historical level,
0:30:27 > 0:30:29this cult of the graveyard?
0:30:29 > 0:30:33And if Gothic really is a secret history of the workings
0:30:33 > 0:30:37of the British mind, what part of that story is told here?
0:30:37 > 0:30:39It sometimes seems to me, reading their work,
0:30:39 > 0:30:43that the Graveyard Poets came into the graveyard precisely
0:30:43 > 0:30:46because they didn't find what they were looking for in the church.
0:30:46 > 0:30:48No sense of magic there,
0:30:48 > 0:30:51and only a rather prosaic form of spirituality -
0:30:51 > 0:30:56bare walls, clear glass, a preacher sermonising from his pulpit.
0:30:56 > 0:30:59Their poems sound like incantations or prayers,
0:30:59 > 0:31:01they're full of supernatural visions.
0:31:01 > 0:31:04It's as if they were seeking to re-enchant a world
0:31:04 > 0:31:09from which they feared the divine mysteries had fled.
0:31:12 > 0:31:16By mid 18th century, the Gothic was fast mutating.
0:31:16 > 0:31:19It was now much more than an architectural style.
0:31:19 > 0:31:23It had become a movement in art and literature.
0:31:23 > 0:31:25More, even - a new language,
0:31:25 > 0:31:29to suggest what couldn't be openly voiced.
0:31:31 > 0:31:35Gothic was becoming a way to speak the unspeakable.
0:31:36 > 0:31:38WOMAN MOANS PASSIONATELY
0:31:38 > 0:31:42But maybe we shouldn't go there quite yet.
0:31:42 > 0:31:46After all, secret thoughts come before secret deeds.
0:31:50 > 0:31:54One Gothic image gripped the Georgian imagination like no other.
0:31:54 > 0:31:56The Nightmare.
0:31:58 > 0:32:01Painted in 1781 by Henry Fuseli,
0:32:01 > 0:32:03it shows an evil looking incubus
0:32:03 > 0:32:07squatting on the chest of a sprawling woman.
0:32:10 > 0:32:14Victim of sorcery, or just having a bad dream? We can't tell.
0:32:15 > 0:32:19Perhaps there's a clue in the spectral steed that peers through
0:32:19 > 0:32:22the drapes - the night mare.
0:32:23 > 0:32:27Critics dismissed the work as meaningless nonsense,
0:32:27 > 0:32:31but the public clamoured to gaze on its ghastly strangeness.
0:32:34 > 0:32:37In truth, Swiss-born painter Henry Fuseli
0:32:37 > 0:32:41probably based his lascivious, sex-starved imp
0:32:41 > 0:32:46on his own frustrated passion for a younger woman named Anna Landolt.
0:32:46 > 0:32:48Whatever the inspiration,
0:32:48 > 0:32:50his image has been endlessly borrowed
0:32:50 > 0:32:53and parodied from that day to this.
0:33:00 > 0:33:04But what was Fuseli's own original purpose?
0:33:10 > 0:33:13Hidden in the vaults of the Tate Gallery is a relatively
0:33:13 > 0:33:18unknown work that gives us a clue to the painter's murky intentions.
0:33:19 > 0:33:22- So he's rack 154.- He is.
0:33:25 > 0:33:27Here we are, Fuseli.
0:33:27 > 0:33:28Thank you very much.
0:33:30 > 0:33:34It's very appropriate that Fuseli's paintings
0:33:34 > 0:33:38are generally to be found in the storerooms of the Tate.
0:33:38 > 0:33:40They have a subterranean character,
0:33:40 > 0:33:44they belong... They sit more easily in the vault, perhaps,
0:33:44 > 0:33:46than on the wall of the gallery.
0:33:46 > 0:33:49This painting, he exhibited to considerable confusion
0:33:49 > 0:33:53at the Royal Academy in 1783,
0:33:53 > 0:33:57under the title Percival Delivering Belisane
0:33:57 > 0:33:59From The Enchantments Of Urma.
0:33:59 > 0:34:04Adding a note, "See the tales of Thyot."
0:34:06 > 0:34:10Byron once spent two entire days combing his library,
0:34:10 > 0:34:14trying to find one of these references of Fuseli's to an ancient
0:34:14 > 0:34:17text, came up with nothing, and said to Fuseli, "What's it all about?"
0:34:17 > 0:34:21Fuseli said, "Actually, I made it up." So too with this picture -
0:34:21 > 0:34:24there was no Thyot, it's not based on any tale from the past.
0:34:24 > 0:34:29The only source is Fuseli's own fevered imagination.
0:34:29 > 0:34:32What does the picture show us?
0:34:32 > 0:34:36A swooning heroine, clasping to the hero
0:34:36 > 0:34:38as he raises a sword
0:34:38 > 0:34:41to behead this wizened crone.
0:34:41 > 0:34:47I imagine she that has come from Fuseli's reading of Macbeth -
0:34:47 > 0:34:49Hubble, hubble, toil and trouble,
0:34:49 > 0:34:52Off with her head at the double!
0:34:52 > 0:34:57Behind, we've got this gallery of Fuselian grotesques,
0:34:57 > 0:35:00a kind of nightmare chorus.
0:35:00 > 0:35:04An old man who seems to be throwing up...
0:35:04 > 0:35:07This chap's in a trance. He's got sightless eyes.
0:35:08 > 0:35:11He is wondering what's going on.
0:35:11 > 0:35:14I think everybody was wondering what was going on!
0:35:16 > 0:35:20Now, what Fuseli's actually doing in this picture is something
0:35:20 > 0:35:23rather interesting, something rather subversive.
0:35:23 > 0:35:27He took narrative painting in the grand heroic style
0:35:27 > 0:35:28and made it into something else,
0:35:28 > 0:35:33he made it into the exhalation of a series of nightmare visions.
0:35:34 > 0:35:37It's even apparent at the level of his technique.
0:35:38 > 0:35:40The background is a smoky murk
0:35:40 > 0:35:44that looks like the kind of pictorial equivalent
0:35:44 > 0:35:45to the caverns of the mind,
0:35:45 > 0:35:49in which figures writhe and wriggle
0:35:49 > 0:35:52like so much spectral ectoplasm.
0:35:53 > 0:35:56No wonder William Hazlitt called Fuseli
0:35:56 > 0:35:59"a nightmare on the breast of British art."
0:35:59 > 0:36:03He'd done something to painting that was deeply troubling.
0:36:03 > 0:36:08He'd turned it from the expression of grand objective truth
0:36:08 > 0:36:11to the expression of subjective fear...
0:36:12 > 0:36:15..psychoses.
0:36:15 > 0:36:18This is a painting that's waiting
0:36:18 > 0:36:21for Freud to arrive and psychoanalyse it.
0:36:27 > 0:36:32Gothic fraudulence took many forms, and had many motives.
0:36:32 > 0:36:36Perhaps Fuseli worried that his fantasies were so weird,
0:36:36 > 0:36:41they'd only be taken seriously if he passed them off as stories of old.
0:36:42 > 0:36:46For his part, Horace Walpole knew that English gentlemen shouldn't
0:36:46 > 0:36:49really be writing trashy horror novels.
0:36:49 > 0:36:53And that's probably why he claimed that The Castle Of Otranto
0:36:53 > 0:36:56was translated from a medieval text.
0:36:57 > 0:37:01But what of the strange case of the Scot, James Macpherson,
0:37:01 > 0:37:05who in the 1760s published epic poems filled with ghosts
0:37:05 > 0:37:09and witches, by an ancient bard named Ossian?
0:37:10 > 0:37:14In fact, Ossian was Macpherson himself,
0:37:14 > 0:37:17who perhaps hoped by this ruse to be seen as the equal of Homer.
0:37:19 > 0:37:21Which, briefly, he was.
0:37:25 > 0:37:29But the most intriguing and elaborate act of Gothic fakery
0:37:29 > 0:37:32was the handiwork of a West Country schoolboy.
0:37:34 > 0:37:38Young Thomas Chatterton was a loner who closeted himself away
0:37:38 > 0:37:41in an attic room of his local church in Bristol.
0:37:43 > 0:37:47He obsessed over the dusty medieval documents he found there,
0:37:47 > 0:37:49reading them avidly.
0:37:49 > 0:37:53Then, he committed the most sensational literary fraud
0:37:53 > 0:37:55of the 18th century.
0:37:56 > 0:37:59In the gloomy dusty attic room of the church,
0:37:59 > 0:38:01Chatterton claimed to have discovered
0:38:01 > 0:38:04a treasure trove of manuscripts and poems
0:38:04 > 0:38:08by a 15th-century monk called Thomas Rowley.
0:38:08 > 0:38:11In fact, these relics of Olde England
0:38:11 > 0:38:15were just part of an elaborate newfangled con.
0:38:15 > 0:38:19The monk, and his verse, said to be the equal of Chaucer's,
0:38:19 > 0:38:22were all invented by Chatterton himself.
0:38:22 > 0:38:25He was the first teenage Goth -
0:38:25 > 0:38:28a young man, uneasy,
0:38:28 > 0:38:31who immersed himself in a world of his own making.
0:38:31 > 0:38:33He even invented his own language,
0:38:33 > 0:38:37a bizarre eccentric form of Middle English.
0:38:42 > 0:38:47Chatterton's forged documents are today housed in the British Library.
0:38:47 > 0:38:51When first published in 1777, they caused a sensation.
0:38:54 > 0:38:59Some critics were transfixed by these jewels of medieval verse.
0:39:00 > 0:39:02Others smelled a rat.
0:39:07 > 0:39:12Here we have it, a great Chatterton forgery.
0:39:12 > 0:39:17Well, as late as 1800, the chap who left it to the British Museum
0:39:17 > 0:39:20still insisted on presenting it as "Manuscripts and drawings
0:39:20 > 0:39:25"supposed to have been written by Thomas Rowley, a priest of Bristol."
0:39:25 > 0:39:27What does it consist of?
0:39:27 > 0:39:31These curious blackened texts...
0:39:33 > 0:39:34Fake aged.
0:39:34 > 0:39:39They look as if they've been stained with mahogany-coloured tea.
0:39:39 > 0:39:41He probably used varnish.
0:39:41 > 0:39:45Written in spidery medieval handwriting.
0:39:45 > 0:39:48That might be somebody's last will and testament.
0:39:48 > 0:39:50A lot of the pages are blank.
0:39:50 > 0:39:51HE CHUCKLES
0:39:51 > 0:39:54Look at this leathery piece of parchment skin,
0:39:54 > 0:39:56you can't read anything on it at all.
0:39:56 > 0:39:59They've almost metamorphosed into works of abstract art.
0:39:59 > 0:40:01Look at that.
0:40:01 > 0:40:04My favourite bits I think are the drawings, which are
0:40:04 > 0:40:08quite astonishingly naive in their handling.
0:40:09 > 0:40:11Cathedrals, churches.
0:40:11 > 0:40:16Always with these sort of... splats of staining,
0:40:16 > 0:40:18as if time could have done that.
0:40:18 > 0:40:23Does time go round with buckets of tea in either hand going...
0:40:23 > 0:40:25"Now you're an old document"?
0:40:25 > 0:40:30There are even some ingenious medieval machines.
0:40:30 > 0:40:35Leonardo da Vinci acted in Bristol circa 1323,
0:40:35 > 0:40:38or so we're supposed to believe.
0:40:38 > 0:40:44What I love about the book is the way it saves the best for last.
0:40:44 > 0:40:47Ah, this is the page I was looking for.
0:40:47 > 0:40:51A series of quite astoundingly inept portraits
0:40:51 > 0:40:54of supposed medieval personages.
0:40:54 > 0:40:57And if you gently lift the leaf,
0:40:57 > 0:40:59you can see that Chatterton
0:40:59 > 0:41:04has actually used a genuine medieval document
0:41:04 > 0:41:07in order to create his own concoctions,
0:41:07 > 0:41:10or confections, of the medieval.
0:41:10 > 0:41:13It was quite a prescient act.
0:41:13 > 0:41:19Because after all, Gothic would actually cannibalise the past.
0:41:19 > 0:41:21Gothic WAS new,
0:41:21 > 0:41:23new like this.
0:41:27 > 0:41:31If it began as a harmless enough act of Gothic impersonation,
0:41:31 > 0:41:33Chatterton's story ended in Gothic horror.
0:41:35 > 0:41:39Despite a precocious budding career as an author in his own right,
0:41:39 > 0:41:43at the age of 17, Chatterton committed suicide
0:41:43 > 0:41:44by drinking arsenic.
0:41:46 > 0:41:50He didn't even live to see the fuss he'd caused, but poets and painters
0:41:50 > 0:41:55would transform him into the embodiment of doomed young genius -
0:41:55 > 0:42:01a beautiful pale-skinned boy, as alluring as a dead rock star.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09Gothic had never been lacking in sexual symbolism.
0:42:10 > 0:42:14Proud towers, dark passageways...
0:42:14 > 0:42:16not to mention giant helmets.
0:42:18 > 0:42:21But while plenty of writers and painters
0:42:21 > 0:42:23had got a foot in this door,
0:42:23 > 0:42:25surprisingly few went all the way.
0:42:25 > 0:42:27WOMAN MOANS PASSIONATELY
0:42:30 > 0:42:33William Beckford, son of the Mayor of London,
0:42:33 > 0:42:35inherited one of the greatest fortunes in Britain
0:42:35 > 0:42:38and spent it like there was no tomorrow.
0:42:39 > 0:42:43Beckford pushed every limit, both as man and writer,
0:42:43 > 0:42:48and he pushed Gothic itself East, to the Orient.
0:42:49 > 0:42:52The result would be a book and a building which scandalised
0:42:52 > 0:42:54all of England -
0:42:54 > 0:42:57but it all began with a party.
0:43:00 > 0:43:05His 21st birthday wasn't so much a celebration as an orgy.
0:43:05 > 0:43:09It lasted for three days, the champagne flowed.
0:43:09 > 0:43:14Castrati were hired to sing in their high-pitched voices.
0:43:14 > 0:43:15Beckford sang along.
0:43:18 > 0:43:21The decorations were lavish.
0:43:21 > 0:43:23Oriental illuminations,
0:43:23 > 0:43:26projected by an 18th-century form of magic lantern,
0:43:26 > 0:43:29were supplied by the painter of sublime landscapes,
0:43:29 > 0:43:32Philip de Loutherbourg.
0:43:33 > 0:43:35There was debauchery too.
0:43:35 > 0:43:39Beckford managed to seduce not only the wife of his cousin,
0:43:39 > 0:43:44but also a 13-year-old boy called William Courtenay.
0:43:44 > 0:43:47"Kitty", Beckford called him.
0:43:50 > 0:43:54The events of his 21st birthday inspired Beckford to write Vathek,
0:43:54 > 0:43:57his most famous novel.
0:43:57 > 0:44:00It combines the saturated colours and fairy-tale quality
0:44:00 > 0:44:02of One Thousand And One Nights,
0:44:02 > 0:44:06with a degree of nastiness new to Gothic fiction.
0:44:08 > 0:44:12At its centre is the degenerate caliph, Vathek.
0:44:13 > 0:44:17He makes a Faustian pact with the Giaour, an oriental version
0:44:17 > 0:44:22of the devil, so that he can indulge his most obscene desires.
0:44:26 > 0:44:30The caliph is perhaps a self-portrait of Beckford,
0:44:30 > 0:44:32certainly of Beckford as he would become.
0:44:32 > 0:44:37But he's also based on Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost,
0:44:37 > 0:44:41a shape-shifting creature in thrall to his own passions.
0:44:44 > 0:44:50At the height of the novel he sacrifices 50 handsome young boys,
0:44:50 > 0:44:53who are thrown down into the maw of the Giaour,
0:44:53 > 0:44:55the devil, he devours them.
0:44:56 > 0:45:01Vathek himself is destined to be devoured by the devil in due course.
0:45:04 > 0:45:08When the novel was first published in English, it was, as so many
0:45:08 > 0:45:15other Gothic novels, disclaimed as a translation of an Arabic original.
0:45:15 > 0:45:16But as time went on,
0:45:16 > 0:45:20Beckford wouldn't disclaim or disown his novel.
0:45:20 > 0:45:26What makes him unique is that he alone, of all Gothic writers,
0:45:26 > 0:45:30actually lived out the Gothic fantasy.
0:45:30 > 0:45:32Or should that be nightmare?
0:45:36 > 0:45:39The scandal of Beckford's affair with the teenage Courtenay
0:45:39 > 0:45:41made him a social pariah.
0:45:42 > 0:45:45For ten years he hid in self-imposed exile.
0:45:47 > 0:45:50He returned, aged 31,
0:45:50 > 0:45:54determined to shield himself against the hated outside world,
0:45:54 > 0:45:58by building the most outrageous Gothic edifice of the age.
0:46:03 > 0:46:05"My everlasting barrier" -
0:46:05 > 0:46:08that was Beckford's name for Fonthill Abbey,
0:46:08 > 0:46:11a private residence built on the scale of one of England's
0:46:11 > 0:46:16great Gothic cathedrals, and built in about a tenth of the time,
0:46:16 > 0:46:20it went up at a rate of knots. Perhaps that's why it collapsed
0:46:20 > 0:46:25under its own weight and is now almost no more.
0:46:25 > 0:46:29But you can still experience it in the form of these engravings,
0:46:29 > 0:46:33these pictures in a book commissioned by Beckford
0:46:33 > 0:46:37from a man called John Rutter, The Delineation Of Fonthill Abbey.
0:46:37 > 0:46:39This was awe-inspiring.
0:46:39 > 0:46:43This was a sublime house. Look at the size of it.
0:46:43 > 0:46:47The couple going up the stairs are barely visible.
0:46:48 > 0:46:51And here we can look the other way going down into the garden.
0:46:51 > 0:46:56Nature almost is dwarfed by the scale of Beckford's Fonthill.
0:46:56 > 0:46:58HE CHUCKLES
0:46:58 > 0:46:59Talking of dwarves,
0:46:59 > 0:47:03he actually HAD a dwarf draw back a curtain at the entrance
0:47:03 > 0:47:07to this room, so that when the very few visitors he received
0:47:07 > 0:47:08did come to call,
0:47:08 > 0:47:11they could be doubly impressed because the scale
0:47:11 > 0:47:13of the person drawing the curtain was so small
0:47:13 > 0:47:15and the building so vast.
0:47:15 > 0:47:19Inside, the effect - well, you can see here - was actually rather cosy,
0:47:19 > 0:47:21with these windows.
0:47:21 > 0:47:24You could look out across the rolling plains of Wiltshire.
0:47:29 > 0:47:31What does it proclaim?
0:47:31 > 0:47:35I think it proclaims Beckford's sense of his own singularity.
0:47:35 > 0:47:41His unrelenting pride in his own foibles, sexual or otherwise.
0:47:41 > 0:47:46I think the building was in a sense a performance as much as a piece of
0:47:46 > 0:47:50architecture. It was Beckford's way of performing his own extravagance,
0:47:50 > 0:47:56his own outsider status, his own uniqueness, his own madness.
0:48:01 > 0:48:04The last decade of the 18th century
0:48:04 > 0:48:07was a boom time for Gothic literature.
0:48:07 > 0:48:10The novel itself was a fairly new art form.
0:48:10 > 0:48:14Ordinary novels often presented some sort of moral lesson
0:48:14 > 0:48:20to the reading public, but by far the most popular books were Gothic -
0:48:20 > 0:48:25low on moral sermonising, high on thrills and terror.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28The best selling author of the age was Ann Radcliffe,
0:48:28 > 0:48:31who made a fortune through stories of brave,
0:48:31 > 0:48:35breathless heroines overcoming the evil agents of darkness.
0:48:43 > 0:48:46Now, these are modern paperback editions of Gothic novels
0:48:46 > 0:48:51and their covers are appropriately lurid, erotic, bloodthirsty.
0:48:51 > 0:48:53But it's very important to remember that
0:48:53 > 0:48:55when the original editions of these books
0:48:55 > 0:48:58appeared in the libraries of Georgian England,
0:48:58 > 0:49:02all the way back then, they were seen as rude, lewd,
0:49:02 > 0:49:05seditious, dangerous books.
0:49:05 > 0:49:09Dangerous above all to impressionable young gels,
0:49:09 > 0:49:15who, it was said, were spending far too much of their time embedded
0:49:15 > 0:49:20in these books, bosoms heaving with fiction-induced excitement.
0:49:23 > 0:49:26It was to save the soul of the English novel
0:49:26 > 0:49:31that Jane Austen tried to force the Gothic genie back into the bottle.
0:49:31 > 0:49:35She poked fun at the genre in her pastiche Gothic novel
0:49:35 > 0:49:38Northanger Abbey, written in 1798.
0:49:41 > 0:49:44Young Catherine Morland is shy and awkward,
0:49:44 > 0:49:47but by reading so-called "horrid novels"
0:49:47 > 0:49:52she can indulge fantasies of heroism in the face of sinister forces.
0:49:52 > 0:49:55She's invited by a handsome young man to stay at his family's
0:49:55 > 0:49:57gloomy mansion.
0:49:58 > 0:50:03And after nightfall, she embarks on an intrepid exploration.
0:50:04 > 0:50:07Suddenly, her candle blows out.
0:50:10 > 0:50:12Catherine was motionless with horror.
0:50:12 > 0:50:16Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room.
0:50:17 > 0:50:19A violent gust of wind rising with sudden fury
0:50:19 > 0:50:21added fresh horror to the moment.
0:50:24 > 0:50:26Human nature could support no more.
0:50:29 > 0:50:33Austen's heroine nearly loses her prospective husband,
0:50:33 > 0:50:37thanks to her inflamed imagination.
0:50:37 > 0:50:41I think Austen's point ultimately is that,
0:50:41 > 0:50:46why worry about imaginary Gothic terrors?
0:50:46 > 0:50:51There are enough horrors involved simply in living your life,
0:50:51 > 0:50:56finding a husband, trying to do the right thing - THAT'S the challenge.
0:50:56 > 0:51:03Forget Italian castles, subterranean vaults, corpses in the cellar -
0:51:03 > 0:51:06real life is quite hard enough to manage.
0:51:09 > 0:51:13Jane Austen's attempts to emasculate Gothic
0:51:13 > 0:51:16with the sharpness of her wit were destined to fail.
0:51:17 > 0:51:22The British obsession with terror was receiving a huge boost
0:51:22 > 0:51:24from events just across the English Channel.
0:51:42 > 0:51:46The French Revolution and the Terror that followed it were truly
0:51:46 > 0:51:51earth-shaking events - a king dragged from his throne by the mob,
0:51:51 > 0:51:54the political order turned upside down,
0:51:54 > 0:51:57an infernal new killing machine, the guillotine,
0:51:57 > 0:52:00slicing off head after head.
0:52:00 > 0:52:04It was as if history itself were turning into some terrifying
0:52:04 > 0:52:07Gothic novel, written not in ink but in blood.
0:52:14 > 0:52:19The caricaturist James Gillray fed vampire-like on British horror
0:52:19 > 0:52:21at the violence in France,
0:52:21 > 0:52:25gleefully transposing the evils of mob rule
0:52:25 > 0:52:27to an imagined French invasion of Britain.
0:52:29 > 0:52:32A demonic peasant family of sans-culottes
0:52:32 > 0:52:36gorges on the body parts of their aristocratic victims.
0:52:37 > 0:52:42It's all very Gothic, right down to the double standards.
0:52:42 > 0:52:44Behind the mask of satire,
0:52:44 > 0:52:48Gillray grins at the gore and the guts of it all.
0:52:49 > 0:52:54Blood from the severed head of Louis XVI cries out for vengeance.
0:52:57 > 0:53:00Inspired by the death of a foreign king,
0:53:00 > 0:53:03Gillray rose above cartooning to become a visionary -
0:53:03 > 0:53:06England's Goya.
0:53:11 > 0:53:14And the French Revolution would have just as profound an effect
0:53:14 > 0:53:16on English Gothic fiction.
0:53:20 > 0:53:25At the height of the Terror, 19-year-old Matthew Lewis,
0:53:25 > 0:53:27junior British diplomat to The Hague,
0:53:27 > 0:53:31fraternised with French refugees and heard their gruesome stories.
0:53:32 > 0:53:35He was inspired to write the most shocking
0:53:35 > 0:53:37of all 18th-century novels,
0:53:37 > 0:53:39The Monk.
0:53:45 > 0:53:48It's set in the monastery of a strict Catholic order,
0:53:48 > 0:53:50undone by vice and sin -
0:53:50 > 0:53:56a metaphor for the rigid Catholic ancien regime of Louis XVI's France.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01It's ostensibly a warning against the corruption
0:54:01 > 0:54:04that seethes beneath the skin of civilisation...
0:54:05 > 0:54:08..but just like Gillray,
0:54:08 > 0:54:11Lewis relished the depravity he pretended to attack.
0:54:14 > 0:54:20The story revolves around a virtuous young monk who becomes corrupted
0:54:20 > 0:54:24and swiftly plunges into debauchery,
0:54:24 > 0:54:28committing murder, incest and rape.
0:54:28 > 0:54:32The whole novel presents a world in which every individual
0:54:32 > 0:54:38seems to be toiling under the burden of suppressed desires and fantasies.
0:54:38 > 0:54:43Every monk is a secret libertine, every nun is a secret harlot.
0:54:46 > 0:54:50The monk at the centre of the tale begins his slide to wickedness
0:54:50 > 0:54:55when a besotted female admirer is unmasked and then undressed.
0:54:56 > 0:55:01She made a motion as if to stab herself. Her bosom was half exposed.
0:55:01 > 0:55:06The monk's eye dwelt with insatiable avidity upon the beauteous Orb.
0:55:06 > 0:55:09And Oh! that was such a breast!
0:55:09 > 0:55:13A raging fire shot through every limb.
0:55:14 > 0:55:16I think the book is about what happens
0:55:16 > 0:55:22when human passion is set free from the constraints of order.
0:55:22 > 0:55:27And what happens is truly catastrophic, truly horrifying.
0:55:27 > 0:55:30The novel is a vision of hell.
0:55:34 > 0:55:36In an echo of the French Terror,
0:55:36 > 0:55:42an angry mob dismembers a prioress and burns her priory to the ground.
0:55:43 > 0:55:47Lewis played on the fear that scenes like this might soon be seen
0:55:47 > 0:55:49on English soil.
0:55:54 > 0:55:59In the end, the depraved monk's soul is claimed in person
0:55:59 > 0:56:01by the devil himself.
0:56:03 > 0:56:05A loud burst of thunder was heard.
0:56:05 > 0:56:08The prison shook to its very foundations.
0:56:08 > 0:56:11A blaze of lightning flashed through the Cell...
0:56:11 > 0:56:14THUNDERCLAP ..and in the next moment,
0:56:14 > 0:56:19borne upon the sulphurous whirlwinds, Lucifer stood before him.
0:56:24 > 0:56:27Lewis himself had committed a double sin -
0:56:27 > 0:56:32he'd said revolution could be sexy, and sex could be revolutionary.
0:56:33 > 0:56:35His book caused a scandal.
0:56:36 > 0:56:40Critics feared it would corrupt morals, that it would get
0:56:40 > 0:56:43innocent readers hot under the collar, or worse.
0:56:44 > 0:56:47Lewis was threatened with prosecution.
0:56:47 > 0:56:50But in the end, Britain's appetite for Gothic won out.
0:56:52 > 0:56:54The Monk would run through many editions,
0:56:54 > 0:56:58though Lewis himself toned down the most graphic passages.
0:56:59 > 0:57:03His contemporary, French writer the Marquis de Sade,
0:57:03 > 0:57:09hailed it as "far superior in every way" to all earlier Gothic novels.
0:57:09 > 0:57:12Of course, he was biased - but he was right.
0:57:17 > 0:57:19It was the most subversive book written in English
0:57:19 > 0:57:22about the most important event of the century.
0:57:22 > 0:57:25And it said dark and dangerous things, that couldn't have been said
0:57:25 > 0:57:29in any language other than Gothic.
0:57:31 > 0:57:37Gothic began as a foible, a whim, a paper-thin fancy,
0:57:37 > 0:57:41a playful recreation of an ancient architectural style.
0:57:41 > 0:57:44But by the start of the 19th century
0:57:44 > 0:57:48it had shapeshifted into something altogether different.
0:57:48 > 0:57:51A fiery medium through which people had begun
0:57:51 > 0:57:55to grope towards a new sense of the self,
0:57:55 > 0:57:57of the conscious and the subconscious mind,
0:57:57 > 0:58:00had begun to express their fears -
0:58:00 > 0:58:05terror of revolution, terror of what it might mean
0:58:05 > 0:58:06to live in a world
0:58:06 > 0:58:10where God's presence was no longer quite so certain.
0:58:10 > 0:58:15And begun to explore fantasies of sexual transgression.
0:58:15 > 0:58:19Already so much fuel on the flames -
0:58:19 > 0:58:23but the Gothic bonfire was only just getting started.