Afterword

Lubomir Doležel

pp. 174-178

in: Andrew R. Smith, Gothic radicalism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Abstract

Implicit in this study of the Gothic sublime has been a reconsideration of the relationship of the Romantics to the Victorians. Such periods of literary history are inevitably sites of contestation, but it is usual to see these two periods as possessing distinct characteristics. It is unusual to suggest that the sublime still plays a role in our understanding of Victorian culture, but this is principally because of its comparatively discrete presence in the late nineteenth century. That the sublime still retains a significance for the Victorians is, I hope, clear. The transformation of the sublime into the incoherent images associated with the unconscious suggests the presence of a new structure of sublimity in the Victorian era. Gone is a sense of passive reverence before the numinous and in its place we find a more rigorous, quasi-scientific investigation into its perceived sexual provenance. However, the science does not quite seem to work.