Contested Pasts: David Hume, Horace Walpole and the Emergence of Gothic Fiction

• Published in: Gothic studies 2012-05, Vol.14 (1), p.21-33
• Main Author: Dent, Jonathan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 18th century; British & Irish literature; English literature; Fiction; Gothic fiction; Historiography; History; Human nature; Hume, David (1711-1776); Literary criticism; Literary Studies; Narrative techniques; Walpole, Horace (1717-1797); Writing
• ISSN: 1362-7937; 2050-456X
• DOI: 10.7227/GS.14.1.5

[...]historiography is a speculative art for Hume; his history is ultimately governed by likelihood and probability. [...]The History of England is underpinned by Hume's belief that with clear, simplified language and coherent narrative structures, historical writing can, to a large extent, act as an 'enlarged mirror' and reflect the past as it was actually lived (5: 545). Whether it is character, a revision of character, or the law, the Gothic reveals the futility of employing any abiding framework to interpret and unify the past; it is simply too remote and polymorphous for any infrastructure of understanding. [...]Walpole utilizes the Gothic to suggest that the imposition of any conceptual framework to understand and write the past will inculcate distortion and reductionism. The Gothic forces the children of the Enlightenment to contemplate the sinister nature of their own pasts and the bloody deeds upon which their present age is founded. [...]as the incidents mentioned above indicate, violent events are not placed in a causal chain in Walpole's novel: they appear to be completely random and, by their unexpected nature, resist traditional historiographical frameworks of understanding.