ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of Gothic fiction is of considerable cultural importance. ‘The Castle of Otranto’ seems at first glance to belie its Gothic attribution by being, not a dark or heavy text, but light, airy, a fairy-tale rather than a nightmare even when it ostensibly strives for the horrific. The early Gothic novels are usually regarded as having close affinities with the emergent historical novel, and this proximity may be theorized thus: Gothic was in itself a mode of history, a way of articulating an obscure and shadowy past and interpreting it. The chapter examines a group of key texts written between 1764 and 1797 and discusses the social relations visible within them. The interrogation of political and social problems takes place within an identifiable and changing constellation of social roles, involving author, narrator, characters and reader, and it is these roles which we need to probe in the major Gothic works.
