“Beauty Sleeping in the Lap of Horror”: Landscape Aesthetics and Gothic Pleasures, from The Castle of Otranto to Video Games

Abstract

In the latter part of the eighteenth century a new enthusiasm—a new way of looking at the physical world—swept through England. This new landscape aesthetic was generally expressed in terms of the closely interrelated concepts of the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque. As a system of artistic, psychological, and philosophical references, the aesthetic fired the imaginations of many eighteenth-century British novelists, especially those who were turning their attention to a then-emerging fictional form, the Gothic novel. The ideas encompassed by this system of landscape aesthetics were perfect vehicles for these eighteenth-century stories of suspense and terror; and during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this adaptable aesthetic continued to provide a common reference point for creators and readers of Gothic fiction. Even today, although we may not use the same terminology, landscape aesthetics based on the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque are still alive and well in popular culture. Many modern-day writers and artists who work in the Gothic tradition—from novelists to film makers to video game designers—continue to draw from the same aesthetic conventions. The plot constructs that thrill today’s audiences (attacks by space aliens; love stories of teenage vampires) differ from the constructs used by eighteenth-century authors (menacing, ghostly figures; terrified virgins fleeing would-be seducers). Nevertheless, the complex emotions—apprehension and terror, anticipation and pleasure—evoked by the best Gothic fictions have remained remarkably consistent.¹ This chapter shows how some of the best-respected practitioners of Gothic have, over the years, used specific elements of an eighteenth-century aesthetic canon to produce specific emotional responses in their audience—that is, to produce the range of feelings that comprise the “delicious terror” of the true Gothic experience.