Mind Representation as an Affective Device in the Gothic: Bridging the Cognitive and the Rhetorical Model

Abstract

Though the centrality of emotion in gothic fiction has long been acknowledged, its mechanisms for generating emotions have remained curiously underexplored. My review of the history of the genre's transatlantic development reveals that mind representation has often been explored as an important affective strategy by the gothicists, and that we can gain a solid understanding of its affective significance by combining the cognitive model of narrative with the rhetorical model. Bringing a diachronic perspective to bear on the study of gothic minds, my research demonstrates the historical embeddedness of the mechanisms of emotional generation, and their evolution under particular historical circumstances. My synthesized approach—which builds on an implied compatibility or even complementarity between the narrative models—externalizes the connections between the models, illuminates the evolution trajectory of both the affective system and the gothic genre per se, and extends our understanding of specific gothic works, authors, and historical periods under consideration.