Abstract
Many literary historians nowadays stress the importance of cultural exchanges between England and the Continent in the process of the creation of Gothic fiction in the last decades of the eighteenth century (Hale in European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange, 1760–1960. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 17–38, 2002; Cornwell in A new companion to the gothic. Willey, pp. 64–76, 2012; Wright in Britain, France and the Gothic, 1764–1820. The Import of Terror. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003). Despite political tensions between England and France at that time, “the import of terror,” as Wright has put it, was a two-way, fast-flowing literary traffic, which impacted on the shape of what is nowadays known as literary Gothic. French romances helped shape Gothic fiction, which was then translated into French and, with French being the lingua franca of the erudite elites, its radiation stretched from the Atlantic to the eastern reaches of the Continent. Polish intellectual elites read the early English Gothic novels in their French translations. In Poland, during the reign of the last king, Stanisław August, literary activity, translation included, was encouraged and supported by the monarch as part of the reformative educational scheme to improve the nation. This paper will attempt to look more closely at these multicultural and multilingual exchanges, with the aim of reading early Gothic fiction’s predilection for the foreign as a consequence of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Enlightenment, which fostered interest in foreign literatures, made possible by mushrooming translations.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Botting, F. (1996). Gothic. London: Routledge.
Butterwick, R. (1998). Poland’s last king and English culture. Stanisław August Poniatowski 1732–1798. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chard, Ch. (2009). Notes. In A. Radcliffe (Ed.), The romance of the forest (pp. 364–397). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clery, E. J. (1995). The rise of supernatural fiction. 1762–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cornwell, N. (2012). European gothic. In D. Punter (Ed.), A new companion to the gothic (pp. 64–76). Willey.
Hale, T. (2002). Translation in distress: Cultural misappropriation and the construction of the Gothic. In A. Horner (Ed), European gothic: A spirited exchange, 1760–1960 (pp. 17–38). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hale, T. (2009). Roman Noir. In M. Mulvey-Roberts (Ed.), The handbook of the gothic (2nd ed.) (pp. 220–226). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Horner, A., & Zlosnik, S. (2005). Gothic and the comic turn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Miles, R. (2002). Europhobia: The catholic other in Horace Walpole and Charles Maturin. In A. Horner (Ed.), European gothic: A spirited exchange 1760–1960 (pp. 84–103). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Mostowska, A. (2014). Powieści, listy. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego.
Oz-Salzberger, F. (2006). The enlightenment in translation: Regional and European aspects. European Review of History, 13(3), 385–409. Retrieved: 1 April 2016. doi:10.1080/13507480600893122
Paulson, R. (1983). Representations of revolution, 1789–1820. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sage, V. (1990). The gothic novel. A casebook. London: Macmillan.
Schama, S. (1989). Citizens. A chronicle of the French Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Scrivener, M. H. (2007). The cosmopolitan ideal in the age of revolution and reaction, 1776–1832. New York: Routledge.
Sinko, Z. (1956). “Monitor” wobec angielskiego “Spectatora.” Wrocław: PAN.
Sinko, Z. (1961). Powieść angielska osiemnastego wieku a powieść polska lat 1764–1830. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
Taylor-Terlecka, N. (2002). Jan Potocki and his Polish milieu: The cultural context. Comparative Criticism, 24, 55–77. doi:10.1017/So144756402005450
The Terrorist System of Novel Writing. (1797). Anon. Monthly Magazine,4. 102–114. Web. Accessed 1 April 2016. Hathi Trust Digital Library. https://www.babelhathitrust.org.
Townshend, D. (2012). Gothic Shakespeare. In D. Punter (Ed.), A new companion to the gothic (pp. 38–63). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Voltaire. (1778). Letters concerning the English nation. London: J. and R. Tonson, D. Midwinter, M. Cooper, & J. Hodges. Retrieved from: https://books.google.pl
Walpole, H. (1998). Preface to the First Edition. The castle of Otranto (5–8). Oxford: Oxford UP.
Wright, A. (2003). Britain, France and the gothic, 1764–1820. The import of terror. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Łowczanin, A. (2017). Multiculturalism, the Foreign and Early Gothic Novels. In: Mydla, J., Poks, M., Drong, L. (eds) Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Literature and Culture Studies. Second Language Learning and Teaching(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61049-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61049-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61048-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61049-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)