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So far we have considered how the Gothic reshapes the sublime for certain ends. If one threat posed to the sublime is its reliance on Classicism, another threat is associated with changes in attitude towards solitude. This is particularly relevant for the Romantic era, in which the roots of this change can be observed. In Romanticism there emerges a fascination with public discourse which is ultimately matched by a Gothic rewriting of the sublime; one that adapts it to provide an account of communal, rather than solitary, experience. This modification of the sublime eventually shifts the emphasis from the natural to the urban. This history is, as we shall see, played out through a range of disparate writings which includes Romantic poetry and encompasses Freud's failure to make the joke conform to the isolating, apparently rebellious, features of the unconscious. First we need to reconsider Frankenstein and see how it develops these ideas, ideas which are subsequently developed by Poe.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230598706_5

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