Why we love scaring ourselves

Find out what happened to Ann Radcliffe, Mother of the Gothic here:    • How this Gothic writer mysteriously d...  

Ever delighted in a scary film? Revelled in chilling scenes from a spooky book, or thrilled with glee at a terrifying level in a video game? Then you're not alone, and you're taking part in a tradition that goes back centuries.

Feeling pleasure in the face of terror has its roots in the 'sublime', defined by Edmund Burke as the strongest emotion a person is capable of feeling. The sublime had a profound influence on the rise of Gothic literature in the 1790s - and beyond.

To learn more about the origins of horror and terror - and why we can't get enough of the stuff - watch our latest video!

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Watch our video on Keats's Spookiest poem:    • 'This Living Hand' | A close reading ...  

Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:34 Pleasure and Terror
08:19 The Gothic


Written, presented, and edited by Rosie Whitcombe
@books_ncats

Directed, produced, and edited by Matty Phillips
@ma_ps_
mphotos.uk

Guest Gaffer: Chris O'Grady
@cog_photo


Bibliography
Aikin, John, and Barbauld, Anna Laetitia, Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (London: J. Johnson, 1792)
Burke, Edmund, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London: A. Robertson, 1824)
'Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful', British Library: Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians, [https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/bu...]
Court, Simon, 'Edmund Burke and the Sublime', Wordsworth Grasemere Blog [https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2015/0...]
Gilpin, William, Remarks on Forest Scenery, and Other Woodland Views [...] (London: R. Blamire, 1791)
‘On Novels and Romances, with a Cursory Review of the Literary Ladies of Great-Britain. Extract of a Letter from a German Lady to Her Friend’, La Belle Assemblée: or Court and Fashionable Magazine (Nov 1806)
Radcliffe, Ann, The Mysteries of Udolpho (Oxford: OUP, 1980)
Radcliffe, Ann, ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry’, New Monthly Magazine, vol. 16 (1826)
'Terrorist Novel Writing', The Spirit of the Public Journals for 1797 [...] (1798)
Townshend, Dale, 'An Introduction to Ann Radcliffe', British Library: Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians, [https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victo...]
Wright, Angela, 'Gothic, 1764-1820', Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination, ed. by Dale Townshend (London: The British Library, 2014)