| Studies in the gothic have traditionally focused on its status as a literary phenomenon, neglecting to account for the ways that its writers were responding to the British gothic architectural revival that reached the height of its popularity between the 1850s and 1870s. They tend to characterize the gothic as a genre emerging in the last half of the eighteenth century, which is concerned with the ontology of the deracinated individual during a period otherwise characterized by the triumph of realism. This dissertation explores the relationship between the emergence of the gothic novel and the enthusiasm for gothic architecture which produced Victorian monuments like the Houses of Parliament, St. Pancras railroad station, and the Albert Memorial. It argues that the gothic literary modes that persisted through to the end of the nineteenth century also frequently engaged and contested the ideologies that lay behind the gothic architectural revival. Writers like Sir Walter Scott, John Ruskin, and Thomas Hardy, who have been linked to literary romance and gothic modes, were also all explicitly involved in the revival of gothic architecture and its application as the architecture of the British Empire. They provide insight into the way gothic revival architecture offered a conservative image of historical, political, and even ethnic continuity at a moment when the nation faced increased agitation for political reform, mass migration to urban centers, labor reform, and an expanding empire. Entering robust architectural debates about the gothic, texts like The Antiquary, The Stones of Venice, and Jude the Obscure illustrate the challenges that faced the industrializing nation as it sought to construct a convincing narrative of its medieval origins. Scott, Ruskin, and Hardy were also central authors for the creation of a new literary heritage industry that increasingly linked acts of reading with physical spaces to be visited by the middle-class literary tourist. Their work illustrates the way the gothic revival and its dialectic of the literary and the material was essential for the development of the notion of a collective British national culture during the nineteenth century. |
