ABSTRACT
The historical novel in the early nineteenth century was dominated by Walter Scott. Whereas before him historical fiction had proceeded on a parallel course with Gothic, or intertwined with it, Scott's novels mark a radical break in the process of mythologisation which characterises his predecessors. He contributed to Matthew Lewis's collection of ballads, Tales of Wonder, and also wrote two heavily Gothic plays, House of Aspen and Doom of Devorgoil. Scott brings his readers too close to the motivations of his characters to allow any of the distinctive Gothic distortion of perspective. Gothic in the last years of the eighteenth century was partly an attitude towards history; more specifically, it clearly had to do with the ways in which a social class sought to understand and interpret class relations in the past. Gothic in the 1830s and 1840s had similar connections, but naturally the passing of several decades effected considerable changes in the nature of the problem.
