THE GOTHIC FICTION AND THE BOURGEOIS PUBLIC SPHERE
THE GOTHIC FICTION AND THE BOURGEOIS PUBLIC SPHERE

Summary/Abstract: The Gothic Fiction and the Bourgeois Public Sphere. The present study discusses the Gothic literary phenomenon in the context of the 18th century British public sphere as depicted by Jiirgen Habermas in his famous study on the structural transformation of the public cultural fields. The material interprets the reasons for the Gothic’s art return to the primordial and archaic phenomenalities as being both politically and aesthetically motivated – that is, as having to do with the demonization of aristocracy by the bourgeoisie, but also with a recuperatory (nostalgic) impulse on the side of the conservative factions of society, who could not adapt to the radicalism of rationalism.

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