Nature and Self: Wordsworths Contributions

to the Transformation of Gothic Conventions

By
Jeffrey E. Denton

Department of English
National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology
and
Hui-fen Tang

Applied Foreign Languages Department

Tung Fang Design University

Abstract
The term Gothic brings forth the images that have become symbolic of the
horror tale, but the term encompasses a great deal more today than it did in the early
eighteenth-century. It has been enlarged and made much more acceptable to
audiences of differing social classes through higher uses and subtlety. This paper
proposes that one poet who had a share in this transformation was William
Wordsworth, whom, surprisingly, openly attacked gothic conventions. Wordsworths
poems used the gothic conventions throughout adding a dark connection between his
favorite subject of nature and the anxieties of his characters, but in ways that
differed from the low-class popular genre prose of the time. This use by
Wordsworth contributed in bringing the gothic style into acceptance by more
well-read and well-bred citizens of the times.
Key words:

William Wordsworth, Gothic literary conventions, Gothic elements

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Discussion
The invaluable works of our elder writersare
driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid
German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant
stories in verse. When I think upon this degrading
thirst after outrageous stimulation, I am almost ashamed
to have spoken of the feeble effort with which I have
endeavoured to counteract it
William Wordsworth
Wordsworth, in his Lyrical Ballads Preface, was most probably partially referring
to the growing fascination with Gothic literature that was capturing the growing
market of prose readers. The statement gives no doubt that the poet, rather than
simply disliking the genre, actively endeavoured to counteract it.
First of all, it is important to define just what we are talking about. What is this
genre, which promotes such dislike in Wordsworth that he should publicly speak out
about it when it is gaining such popularity at the time despite the intellectual elite
seeing it in a negative critical light? From the European developed architecture of the
same name the novel developed and the English Romantics of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth-centuries came to think of the style as both awe inspiring and
mysterious (Baton 84).
When anyone starts discussing the term Gothic they almost immediately think of
vampire stories, tales of horror and terror, helpless damsels, and supernatural tales that
chill the bones. Karl Beckson and Arthur Ganz recognize the genre of Gothic as a
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type of romance popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuriesusually

set in medieval castles withghosts,gloom...and supernatural paraphernalia, and
were thrillers designed to evoke genteel shudders (Beckson 101).
But Gothic has come to mean much more in the present time and the scope of
elements and style has evolved to include more and more possibilities which overrun
into other accepted literary categories. Marie Mulvey-Roberts, in her Handbook to
Gothic Literature, now finds an almost endless definition of what is included in
contemporary Gothic. However, quoting Angela Carter, there is the retention of a
singular moral function that of provoking unease (Introduction xvii). In other
words, the Gothic story has evolved from its beginnings into many forms. But what
aided in this expansion of the extravagant story? How did it occur? Why did it
occur? And why is the consistent part psychological more than supernatural? The
reasons may be many and certainly include the work of such thinkers as Sigmund
Freud and Carl Jung. But writers affect writers and few writers are original in
developing new approaches to a winning mix and no one can successfully argue that
Gothic is not a winning mix even today.
It is the intent of this paper to demonstrate the possibility that William
Wordsworth, whether intentionally or not, rather than counteracting these popular
extravagant stories, actually contributed to a major transformation of the Gothic
convention that greatly enlarged the scope of the term and the subject matter treatment
for future writers before Freud or Jung or the ideas associated with them were so
clearly evident in literature. It is also argued that regardless of his comments against
the genre, Wordsworth was strongly influenced by it early in his career and its
elements are legion throughout his varied works over the length of his career.
It is known that the Romantic poets often drew from Gothic traditions for their
themes, ideas, and even for the choice of words they used (Thompson 1). This
tendency ranges from Lord Byron to Mary Robinson and to John Southey, Samuel
Coleridge, and, yes, even William Wordsworth. Coleridges work was clearly more
in line with the Gothic traditions of the past and took fantastic or exotic events and
made them somewhat spectacular in an Elizabethan way. He clearly shows its
influence in such works as Christabel and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Wordsworth, on the other hand, preferred simple and more ordinary scenes to make
the everyday event fresh and interesting hardly a description of the Gothic ideal.
Interestingly, Wordsworth in the early years of his career read several
mainstream Gothic novels of the time as well as being an admirer of John Miltons
works (considered quite Gothic in style, but just too early in time). These Gothic
mainstream novels mentioned were ones that began and exemplified the style
prevalent in the late 17th to the mid 18th century. Wordsworth read such titles as The
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Monk and Castle Spectre by Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Romance of the Forest and
The Italian by Ann Radcliffe (although he stated that he only read Radcliffe to laugh
at the works (Thompson 3)), The Mysterious Mother and The Castle of Otranto by
Horace Walpole the father of the Gothic novel. As to the The Mysterious Mother, it
was said at the time to be the most disgusting, detestable, vile composition that ever
came from the hand of a man. No one with one spark of true manliness, of which
Horace Walpole has none, could have written it (4). The list of Gothic novels read
by Wordsworth, provided by Douglas Thompson, includes several others, which,
through Wordsworths letters as well as borrowings to his own works, demonstrates
his fondness in some cases as well as his disgust of this type of writing.
Several of Wordsworths poems concern the supernatural, which can easily be
argued to therefore fall into the outrageous, which he seemed to dislike. But
Wordsworths lapses into hypocrisy are not the overt purpose of the thesis here. Its
the contribution he made to the changing aspect of the genre whether intentional or
not that he gave. A connection was made between the Romantic and the Gothic,
which switched the very focus of the Gothic genre away from the earlier narrow
treatment of subject and style to a broader more subtle, modernized, and naturalized
approach.
Wordsworth argued that those German tragedies created outrageous
stimulation. However, he also argued in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads that poetry
should have a purpose and one purpose would be pleasure to the reader. Wordsworth
recognized that poetry must excite the reader and give pleasure. Gothic was a way of
producing excessive emotion (Botting 6) and Wordsworth, like many Romantic poets,
used the style or elements for just that reason the sublime effect of the image that
was created by elements and storyline.
As stated, the concept, style, and elements of the Gothic genre during the
eighteenth-century was that of castles, oppressive ruins, wild landscapes, catholic or
feudal societies, guilt and shame, nocturnal landscapes, dreams, apparitions,
wandering Jew characters, madhouses, silences, tales within tales, etc (Sedgwick
9-10). Since the Romantic poets borrowed extensively, it initially can be assumed that
these elements would be found within their poems.
Again, the book that started the style was Walepoles The Castle of Otranto
published in 1764 (Thompson 4). Wordsworth was born in 1770.
The Monk was
published in 1796 and The Italian in 1797 (4). The genre was therefore begun
shortly before the birth of Wordsworth and two of the major novels that he had
contact with were published when he was 26 and 27 years of age.
Through
his
26th and 27th year, William Wordsworth was engaged in work on his Lyrical Ballads,
which he first published in 1798. We can use these initial dates to indicate the
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parallel of Wordsworths career and the status of Gothic writing. The Castle of
Otranto was followed by a multitude of copying of the style and elements so that
many stories were like a perverse convention. Once you read one, you could
accurately predict the others (Sedgewick 9). But despite this large body of similar
work and Wordsworths obvious readings and similar usage of elements common to
this then popular genre Stephen Gill in his well-written biography of the poet never
touches upon any such material. Clearly indicating that Wordsworth had access to
many of the contemporary works through Hawkshead school, the two schoolmasters
William Taylor and Thomas Bowman, as well as later at Cambridge, Gill only
discusses classics and scientific monographs. Any borrowing or interest in the
fictional literature popular to the general public but distained by the educated elite is
avoided.
So if the Gothic literature did affect him, how then did this go on to allow
William Wordsworth to have an effect on the development of the Gothic conventions
that transformed or helped to transform them into later forms? The answer may lie
in the later emphasis that Gothic literature placed on the concept of the inside of man
versus what is on the outside. The three main elements of modern Gothic are: whats
inside a man, whats outside a man, and what separates the two locals (13). The
inside can be thought of as the self and whatever aspects reside within the
psychology, character, virtues, etc. The outside can be thought of as the forces of
nature, others, locations and homes, etc. And finally, that which separates them are
events as well as counterparts to the elements considered to be outside of the person
(13). Wordsworth understood that the outside can not only be an influencer of what
is inside, but can also be a reflection with on firm separation as we will discuss later,
no real boundaries.
Today, the definition of Gothic has changed so much that there are really no
limits or boundaries any more. The time of dream landscapes, supernatural behavior,
ghosts, and creatures have been pushed to the side. Thats not to say these elements
are not still strong but stories are more realistic and even more sublime when it is
possible to connect certain feelings and impulses that are common to us all. The
adult generally does not feel afraid of the goblin or the vampire. But we find that
things familiar to us yet made uncanny or strangely warped become disturbing and
somehow much closer to ourselves. We find the possibility of commonality with
community or ourselves quite powerful and the story has the ability to bring
out pleasure in the audience (Wordsworth, LB 34). Reading pleasure can be
derived from much more than simply happy scenes. For example, reading pleasure
can be obtained from material that makes a reader contemplate possibilities and to see
things in new lights and in finding or not finding resolutions to situations. Gothic
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literature saw its emphasis shift to the psychological aspects of the inside self rather
than the stereotypical supernatural forces as the prime movers in worlds where
individuals could not be sure of others or even themselves (Botting 12). Excesses
came from within, from hidden, pathological motivations that rationality was
powerless to control (12). With the right Gothic settings, or a sprinkling of other
elements, the psychological thriller was built on these Gothic traditions and
environments.
Though William Wordsworths distain for the outrageous, extravagant stories did
not stop his early and later use of the elements of Gothic convention, his use of those
elements was remarkably similar to the later developed emphasis on the psychological
rather than the supernatural. Fred Botting states that, Gothic writing thrived and
exerted an influence on more properly [sic] literary forms (15) of writing such as
poetry, as the sublime was linked to poetic and visionary power and evoked
excessive emotion (4). Therefore, is it not arguable that the elements within the other
more properly literary forms might equally have a powerful effect on Gothic
writing?
Wordsworth worked to produce poetry that would counteract the effect of the
degrading thirst for Gothic but it seems in a way that legitimized its conventions by
self-consciously putting them to more acceptable and ideological uses. This then
would seem to be the unintentional effect Wordsworth really had on the genre. He
merely was one of the instrumental mainstream writers that helped to transform a low
art to a more acceptable one.
In Guilt and Sorrow, Wordsworth strongly used Gothic elements and
conventions to create a poem that, looking back from today, is remarkably similar in
sound and style with Edgar Allan Poes. The subject matter of the poem is the
poisonous effects of guilt. The main character is the wandering Jew-like Traveler,
the returned sailor, who moves along in his tale to be hung by the law in the end for
his crimes. Upon his swinging corse an eye can glance (LXXIV: 11). Elements
that can easily be considered Gothic include among others the pile of Stone-henge,
the lone mansion, the lonely fort, the helpless women, and the unburied dead
(LXXIV: 11). The settings include the lengthening road, the peaceful plain, the silent
sea, and the forest glade. Which, along with the storm, the sun, the moon, and other
aspects of nature show Wordsworths belief in the kinship between man and nature
and the psychology of man in connection with and in relation to nature has a very
dark side which breeds the apprehension necessary to enthrall the reader.
This representation of nature is one of the foremost aspects of Wordsworths
poetry. One of the major objections of his friend Coleridges work is that he ignored
the morally curative power of nature and took to the supernatural instead (Voller
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13). But it was also Wordsworth that shows nature in the unusual light and more than
once mixes the supernatural or hint of it in connection with nature. Nature is full of
powerful symbols and elements that were adopted and developed in the Gothic
convention. The setting is perhaps the foremost element of the Gothic story. A
bright sunny day with loads of cheerful children and families again is not consistent
with the Gothic style. But present the gloomy, stormy; even silent night with a
waxing or full moon and the reader begins to slip into the right mood for the story.
Wordsworths poems focused on nature and the natural background in most of his
poems. And surprisingly, a great many of his poems exemplified nature as dark
rather than bright. Darkness, in a metaphorical sense, threatens the light of reason
with what is not known. Gloom removes many of the perceptions we have about
order into obscurity. Uncertainty creates mysteries and passions that remove reason
from the mind. Nighttime gives free reign to imagination (Botting 32). Wordsworth
never actually expressly imposed any supernatural or evil aspect to these natural or
even dark nighttime scenes in and of themselves; rather, one could see them as rigidly
uncaring and set apart from mankind. Nature as amoral; the scenes were the
outside. Nature sometimes acts, as antagonist to the characters and sometimes it
serves as protection or savior, but it never really intends any purpose it simply is.
So when Wordsworth indicates the morally curative power of nature he is
bviously referring to the inside, the self and the need to commune with nature to
build or rebuild oneself, to find the peace of mind to think, to understand oneself in
light of a more stable, unchanging force. As he demonstrates in his works,
Wordsworth believes that force to be neutral though a powerful influence on the
inside of the human self.
In The Thorn (Wordsworth, Collected Poems 197) the poet demonstrates word
choices that bring to the mind of the reader dark images of nature. It is a mass of
knotted joints/ A wretched thing forlornUp from the earth these mosses creepto
drag it to the ground Even the breeze creeps in stanza XX. But in stanza IV
and V he contrasts the dark with the light: a beauteous heap, a hill of mossall
lovely colours there you see However, also in stanza V he continues in a
surprising macabre way, Is like an infants grave in sizeas like as like can be
The poem continues to the woman Martha Ray who sits by the thorn, and a third
person narrator tells us why she is crying since we cannot determine the reason
ourselves. It seems that the woman had been with child and abandoned by the
husband. The woman, Martha Ray, had gone wild with a cruel fire in her brain
(XII:8) and the child had died upon the hill with the thorn and beautiful moss. The
narrator recounts conjecture by some about whether the child had died in birth or
had been hung or drowned by the mother. Throughout, words such as O Misery! O
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Misery! (XVIII: 4) and O Woe is me! (XXIII: 10) emphasize the despair and grief of
the mother.
Wordsworths word choices and contrasting descriptions of nature in one and the
same place reflect on the mind of the character Martha Ray her joy of an impending
marriage and child and her subsequent madness and death (killing) of her own child
(the twisted thorn being pulled down into the ground a grave). What modern
reader with knowledge of todays Gothic forms could not see this in the light of a
gothic poem. Edgar Allen Poes best works have no vampires, no werewolves, and no
mummies; rather, his best works revolve around the grief, fear, and anxieties of his
characters dealing with their environments and some central outside force such as
the raven or the black cat. Wordsworth, shortly before his American counterpart,
Poe, began the transformation of Gothic elements and convention towards the
psychological rather than the supernatural.
The themes of insanity, impairment, and alienation are ones that the poet
explored and used to accomplish his purpose in writing his poetry. In considering
the Gothic conventions, the alienation of the human subject from the culture and even
the language in which he or she is located makes for a feeling of aloneness and a fear
of survival on several levels (Botting 12). In the more supernatural of Gothic tales,
we see Renfield alienated so that Draculas influence can remove any hope of a true
survival. Wordsworth understood the themes that built emotional and psychological
anxiety and led up to such conditions as the insanity or confusion of his characters
an exploitation of the inside self.
The Idiot Boy (Collected Poems 126) demonstrates the effect of nature on two
characters, Betty Foy and her impaired son Johnny. Nature, as said, is neutral and
uncaring.
But it is the cold moonlight dale punctuated by the hooting of owls
that nurtures the fear in Betty Foy and raises that fear to a level of contemplated
suicide over her failure as a caring mother. It is the idiot boy that cannot
conceptualize the dark and confuses the moon with the sun, the owl with the cock.
The passing of time by the clock the clock gives warning of eleven/ Tis on
the stroke (32:2,3) is another convention of the modern Gothic. The passing
of time marking waiting builds the psychological pressure in the character as if steam
was being compressed. And either a release of that steam occurs or an explosion of
desperation. In this case, Betty Foy goes out in search for her son, whom, through
her own momentary blindness, was sent out by her into the darkness and perceived
cruelty of nature to his possible demise.
When she at first finds he has not arrived at the doctors, her fear and guilt
encompass her mind and she blames the neighbor for being ill, the reason for
Johnnys trek, and then reaches the point of suicide in a green-grown pond (61:3).
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Fortunately for the old girl the narrator reminds her (and the reader) that the horse is
great and trustworthy even if her son is not.
The nature background sets the mood clearly. During the time of trial and trouble,
the owls are about and the moon oversees all.
The owlets through the long blue night
Are shouting to each other still:
Fond lovers, yet not quite hob nob,
They lengthen out the tremulous sob,
That echoes far from hill to hill. (stanza 60).
The mood is melancholy and oppressive, mirroring the emotional distress and anxiety.
This setting begins to change even as the emotions change in the characters as
they find each other and set about going home.
By this the stars were almost gone,
The moon was setting on the hill,
So pale you scarcely looked at her:
The little birds began to stir,
Though yet their tongues were still. (stanza 84).
This progression to the promise of a daytime scene again reflects the emotional state
of the characters and their movement from fear, guilt, and anxiety to one of normalcy.
This triumph over the uncertainty of their actions, lives, and the fear of forces
outside of themselves evolves along with the condition of their surrounding
environment. They come out into the light so to speak, as the hero and heroines of
the Gothic escape the confines of the castle or tomb. But Wordsworths subject
matter is as he himself stated (in paraphrased form), in that it is using events and
occurrences of everyday in a way that makes them unusual.
The theme of madness and suicide is certainly not limited to just one of his
poems. Wordsworth was fascinated with the guilt, fear, and anxieties of the mother
and explored these themes in several poems. Her Eyes Were Wild describes the
isolated mother and child searching for the husband/ father that has abandoned them.
Abandonment is also a theme Wordsworth recognized as being a major influence on
the state of mind of women. And in the Gothic, it is usually the women that are
oppressed and misused. It is the Gothic convention to ascribe powerless sexuality to
the heroine (Sedgwick 48). The mother of the child, again feeling the pressure of
being abandoned, most likely because her beauty is flown (7:6), contemplates
jumping with her child over the sea-rocks edge (5:4) and ending the pain of her
life.
Nature shows two faces here as well as in The Thorn. The high cragthe
leaping torrents when they howlpoisons of the shade along with merry birds in
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springearth-nuts fit for food all go to reflect the moods and emotions of the mother
who is talking to her child and to herself; each description of the natural setting
mirroring the gothic descriptions of nature that will be used routinely by other authors.
Nature is not evil and it is not good, it simply is. However, again Wordsworth makes
the statement that communing with nature allows reflection on ones inside self and
may be seen as a reflection of the state of mind of each character. The use of nature
as a reflection of the characters insides can be seen in many later works, notably
Poes The Fall of the House of Usher as the Family Mansion and the surrounding tarn
and dead trees are truly mirror images of the remains of the family that dwells within.
The connection between mind, mood, emotions, and nature aids in creating that
allegorical atmosphere that all readers can associate with.
Death or the threat of death, something all can relate to, is a given in Gothic
stories. The supernatural embodies the idea of death; as does nature. But even the
later Gothic writings concentrating on psychological anxieties finds the fear of death
and the eventuality of that explosion from emotional pressure resulting in some act
that usually ends in death a major thematic element. Even the madness, a theme of
Wordsworths, becomes an important element that will later be explored and refined
further by E. A. Poe, R. L. Stevenson, and even Henry James. Again, for a man who
is so distaining of a genre, Wordsworth embraced these elements that gave rise to
outrageous stimulation. But even though it could be argued that all of these
themes, such as death, fear, etc. are again just ordinary, everyday events that
Wordsworth was treating in a way to make them seem different, it still should be
noted that one way he treated them different was to present them in a dark light.
To move them into a psychological mode of presentation that made the reader
disturbed in his or her own thoughts or perceptions and isnt that a description of the
modern concepts behind the Gothic story? Growing in popularity in Wordsworths
time was Graveyard poetry. It was popular in the first half of the eighteenth-century
(Botting 33). It gave images of death to encourage readers to think about the horrors
of the grave. Graveyard poetry included spectres and ghosts and spooky nighttime
scenes.
But this kind of poetry also accomplished something Wordsworth
considered to be a worthy purpose it elevated a persons thoughts to higher
spiritual considerations.
In We are Seven (Collected Poems 83), the subject matter is death and the
perceptions or lack of understanding of death from the viewpoints of a young girl and
a passing adult male. Here Wordsworth indeed wants to elevate a persons thoughts.
The simple childs sisters and brothers dwell near their mother in the courtyard and
the traveler sees that at least two are in their graves. But despite his attempts to
make the girl see the situation of her family rationally, the little girl continues to tell
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the man that we are seven in number.

The poem does not have any express elements of the supernatural. It only
raises questions of death and the perception of reality from different viewpoints.
This simple conflict between perceptions of such a serious (at least to the man)
subject is somewhat disturbing to the careful reader and raises underneath the
question of the absent father. Is this yet another abandonment? Is the issue here
also one of alienation? The girl was wildly clad and had a rustic air about her (3:1,2).
We see the female with her mind not quite right. Her thoughts are addled.
Regardless of her age, her perception of reality makes the shades of her brother and
sister alive for her. Can the reader perceive the hint of ghosts that may be real?
The poem Lucy Gray or Solitude (Collected Poems 82) can be seen in a dark
light. The father sends Lucy out into the cold snow covered moor to help fetch her
mother home before a winter storm. But the storm comes early and Lucy is lost.
Only the footprints that disappear in a planked bridge tell of her passage. But the
poem tells us that some maintain that she is still alive, Upon the lonesome wild
(15:4) because they to this day see her another ghost story?
Sonnets upon the punishment of death (Collected Poems 517-520) is a grouping
of fourteen short series poems concerning death that Wordsworth composed between
1839 and 1840. They round out the discussion herein concerning the theme of death
and perception of the character. Again, Wordsworths choice of words clearly draws
the darkened mood of the poems into clear focus for the reader. These are poems
that while attempting to make a moral point of capital punishment also excite the
reader with that outrageous stimulation that makes the poems interesting and
attractive to the paying public.
In death, when evil against good has
fought
With such fell master that a man may
dare
By deeds the blackest purpose to lay
bare
Is death, for one that condition
brought, -For him, or any one, -- the thing that
ought
To be most dreaded? Lawgivers, beware,
Lest, capital pains remitting till ye spare
The murderer, ye, by sanction to that
thought,
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Seemingly given, debase the general mind;

Tempt the vague will tried standards to
disown;
Nor only palpable restraints unbind.
But upon Honours head disturb the
Crown,
Whose absolute rule permits not to withstand
In the weak love of life his least command.
The moral argument (the moral function of creating unease as Angela Carter
states remains consistent even today) that Wordsworth is putting forth is done so in a
very Gothic manner in that it exemplifies elements which are part of the dark, sinister
atmosphere that has a purpose of creating unease in the reader. Because of injustice
the very head of the King, of the Judge, is put to the threat that they themselves
bestow upon the murderer. There is no more than allusion to supernatural, the idea
of holy justice perhaps. But puritan and catholic religions as well as feudal systems
are elements of the Gothic convention. It has always been very proper for the writer
of higher purpose or conventional literature to use the religious theme without
seeming to touch on the lower literary genre of the Gothic, but both encompass the
idea of that which is outside of the self and in which a person has no control the
supernatural and the apprehension that stems from this outside.
In summary, with the idea that William Wordsworth felt that the growing
genre of Gothic literature was an affront to higher, better literature there seems to be
little argument in the critical views of most writers. If the term Gothic is applied to
Wordsworth, it is that he experimented with it early and discarded it, as it was
foreign to his sensibilities (Voller 3). As stated, it is his friend Coleridge that the
word Gothic is associated with of these two men. However, as noted, the Gothic
style and emphasis moved from the supernatural into the psychological within the
nineteenth-century and into the twentieth-century.
This transformation, this
progression of thought, increased the scope of the genre and made for more
engrossing material that looked more at the inside of the self than creatures of
supernatural origin.
Wordsworths poetry, in many respects uses nature to mirror this inside of
his characters selves. Nature is neutral, but it can be cruel by its completely
uncaring state. Wordsworth uses nature to set moods, often conflicting and in
comparison to one another but as a reflection of the thoughts and mindsets of the
characters, who are many times crazed, confused, or fearful. Therefore, the readers
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get a macabre dark sense within poetry that speaks of the sublime and awe of the
everyday. But the everyday put differently, communing with nature and pulsing with
emotional disturbances. Although it can be said that all the elements used by
Wordsworth were used long before there was Gothic, per se, the crux of the argument
herein is that the use of these elements were not pre-Gothic but after the Gothic story
had been around for over 20 years. Because of this, his use of the elements would
have been identifiable as such to the reading public. Further, his use of the elements in
connection to nature would help to legitimize or elevate a low art to a more acceptable
one. Finally, his change in emphasis to the psychological was what Gothic prose
transformed into years later through more identifiable horror and suspense writers.
So, though the definition of Gothic must be one much closer to the present times
broader scope and no direct links to specific authors has been alluded to for the
refinement of the genre, it is fair to argue that Wordsworths poetry and concentration
on the anxieties of his characters and the mirroring of his settings was very timely and
very Gothic in nature.

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