"The Daemon Lover", Coleridge’s "Christabel", Robinson’s "The Haunted Beach" and Keats’s "The Eve of St. Agnes"

Résumé ou Introduction

The supernatural is one aspect, perhaps the most important one, of the genre of Gothic fiction or poetry. Although supernatural themes can be identified in all pieces of Gothic literature the presentations differs vastly, especially when it comes to the Romantic period in which the Gothic genre gained attention and popularity. Said popularity and its simplicity are the reasons for its vilification by well known poets at the time. Contrary to the fact that Gothic literature has been demeaned and criticised as worthless by Romantic authors like William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and their contemporaries by cause of its conformity to the people's taste, some features of Gothic fiction can be found in Romantic poems. One could argue, that this is owed to the fact that the poets mentioned above attempted to increase their degree of popularity amongst the readers of Gothic fiction, but I hold the opinion that this would be a false accusation. They undeniably used certain features of the Gothic genre in some of their Romantic poems, but in ways which can be considered to be of great elegance and use for the Romantic period as a whole.

In the following essay I am going to compare the treatment of the supernatural in the traditional Scottish ballade 'The Daemon Lover' to Coleridge's 'Christabel', John Keat's 'The Eve of St Agnes' and Mary Robinson's 'The Haunted Beach'. Subsequent to the juxtaposition of these different approaches to the supernatural I will examine how the Romantic poets implemented Gothic features into their works. I argue that the Gothic features in these poems serve as symptomatic representations of human emotions.