A Look into the Genres through the Ages
Project Overview
Group Members: Courtney Meola, Anne Giordano, Joey Glass, and Ian Seale
Our group analyzed a focused portion of the overall corpus in order to see the similarities and differences between the the Gothic genre and the Horror genre, and to track how they have changed over time. Our corpus contains thirty-three texts that range in publication dates from 1764 to 1915. This focused set of literature was taken from the collaborative class corpus. After noticing that the Gothic genre dominated pre-1860 literature and the Horror genre dominated post-1890 literature, our group became fascinated by this rift. For that reason, our corpus is divided into three time periods: Gothic literature before 1860, the overlap of Gothic and Horror works between 1860 and 1890, and Horror literature published after 1890.
To investigate these time periods, we used Lexos and Voyant to analyze our texts, focusing specifically on WordClouds and word frequency counts provided by both methods. Using these textual analysis methods as well as researched historical context, we explored the following:
In Lexos, we chunked the three sections of our corpus separately into 5,000 or 7,000 word parts. In order to find the words of greatest importance, we used the scrubbing feature to rid the chunked sections of text of stopwords by inserting Matthew Jockers’ stopwords list. After the sections were chunked and the stopwords were removed, we could then use the visualizations called MultiCloud and WordCloud to analyze the text.
In Voyant, we uploaded the three time period sections of the corpus separately as well. A variable to be aware of is that Voyant had it’s own list of stopwords. Although we added some of our own, it was impossible to add Jockers’ stopwords in this program. For this reason, Voyant and Lexos show slightly different results in relation to which words are most frequent in our corpus. Voyant visualizes the five most frequent words used in each corpus in word cloud form and graph form.
Our Corpus:
1860-1890 Gothic and Horror texts
Historical and Literary Timelines
Based on our approach of focusing on specific time periods in these genres, we felt it was necessary to provide both a timeline of the works, as well as a historical timeline:
For obvious reasons, the works timeline was implemented on necessity, but we felt the historical timeline gives additional background information that can be helpful in understanding motivation behind publishing the works. The history we chose to focus on includes European and American events based upon the authors in our corpus. Literature communicates societal norms, changes, and behavior and these events further communicate that message. Here is a more detailed rationale behind incorporating these specific events:
- 1760-Industrial Revolution Begins: One of the more important dates in modern history, as daily life was significantly improved for citizens through the development of various technologies. As a result, these new technologies were new topics/elements for authors to incorporate into their writing.
- 1776-American Revolution: Effect on these two genres is rather limited, but obviously had a major effect on the world and American literature.
- 1776-_Wealth of Nations_ is published: Marks the development of economical theory in society, as well as a shift in how the global commerce effects nations individually. Direct result of the Industrial Revolution. Regarded as one of the most important literary works ever produced in terms of effect on modern society.
- 1783-American Revolution Ends: US is now a country and arguably, American literature is now officially a thing.
- 1788-US Constitution Ratified: Main significance is Bill of Rights and freedom of speech/press. Enables authors to write freely and opens the door for questionable topics to enter the literary world.
- 1792-French Revolution: Major political shifts in France that trickled over into the rest of Europe.
- 1794-Jay’s Treaty: Resolves remaining issues between US/Britain; improved relations, increased trade, travel, and the exchange of information.
- 1810-University of Berlin founded: quickly became known as one of the best universities in Europe and produced a number of Europe’s greatest thinkers.
- 1814-Congress at Vienna: Britain, Spain, Portugal, a politically new France, and the Netherlands are meeting to discuss the world without Napoleon, and they agree to eventually abolish the slave trade. Also begins Pax Britannica-period of “peace” in Europe ends in 1914.
- 1848-Revolutions across Europe: Occurred in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Austria, Hungary. With death and chaos being so common, it inevitably took hold in literature.
- 1848-_Communist Manifesto_ published: another major philosophical work that influenced other areas of literature, and obviously politics.
- 1850-Alfred Tennyson named Poet Laureate: Many of his poems had similar themes seen in Gothic and Horror literature, which influenced future writers as well.
- 1854-Big Ben finished: mark of Urbanization and the turn of new Industrial Age. Ironically, the theme of “time” was extremely relevant within Gothic and Horror literature.
- 1861-US Civil War begins: Again, the start of a war propels death and suffering into prominent roles in literature.
- 1864-Formation of International Red Cross: Ironic in terms of major themes seen in Gothic and Horror.
- 1865-US Civil War ends: Reconstruction begins, setting forth societal/political changes in America.
- 1871-Franco-Prussian War ends: unification in GER & ITAL, “New Imperialism” takes hold marking expanded conquests by powerful nations.
- 1873-Panic of 1873: also known as the “Long Depression” and lasts until 1896, effects US and major European nations.
- 1877-Thomas Edison invents the Phonograph: a machine used to reproduce recorded sound, which is another major theme seen in our sub-corpora.
- 1900-Literacy reaches new heights: Germany leads world in literacy rate, Literacy is said to be above 90 percent in Britain, France, Norway, Sweden, and Australia; between 70 and 90 percent in the United States, Canada and Japan; 78 percent in Italy; 50 to 70 in the Balkans; 30 to 50 percent range in Russia; and below 30 percent in China, India, Africa and the Islamic countries.
- 1900-Exposition Universelle: world fair held in Paris displaying achievements of past century and to push development into the next.
Pre-1860 Gothic Fiction
Here is an example of how Oliver Twist was chunked into 2 sections, each with its own MultiCloud:
The most significant theme in early Gothic literature was suspense. We see this through the Lexos WordCloud and topics, which included words like “surprise, mystery, astonishment, and confounds.” This also explains why courage was a key word, as the works likely posited courage as the way to overcome the suspenseful situations.
Another key theme was time–a word that appeared 848 times in our corpus. You can see above it’s listed as a keyword in both sections of Oliver Twist. You can see below that it’s the second-most frequently used word in all 10 works from this time period. This makes sense, as suspense often deals with perceived slowing of time, waiting anxiously for something to happen. Think of the tension, excitement, the nervous suspense in most thriller movies, and you’ll find most of their tropes have to do with time, waiting, expecting something to happen. This has its roots in Gothic literature, where suspense and time are interweaving key themes.
One surprising finding was how many of the most frequently used words were opposites: morning/night, boy/girl, live/die, etc. This might go hand-in-hand with the biggest topic, suspense. As simple as it may appear, dichotomies can contrast and build suspense as one thing transitions to another, i.e. day becomes night. Speaking of which, night was another key theme in the works. Common words included asleep, goodnight, tonight and night. Humans have always had primitive fears of the dark and of nighttime, which is reflected in the early Gothic works as suspense.
Physical senses were a key theme, including words like hand, face, seen, heard and speak. Such bodily imagery makes the works seem personal, as they relate to real, physical people rather than abstract ideas. This correlates with another key theme of relationships, comprised of words like friends, life, care, compassion, and companion. Interestingly, there were very few proper names, to the extent that I didn’t even have to “scrub” any out.
The relationships theme could also combine with the opposites theme to describe rising societal conflict. This could correlate with the American Civil War, which began the very next year in 1861, and was clearly a huge indicator of opposites: the Industrialized North vs. the Agrarian South.
Other Findings: Voyant showed the top 5 words, and the frequencies of each. The most common word was little, which was used 910 times. Interestingly, little was also the top word for most of the other groups. This might be significant to the genres in a subtle way we haven’t picked up on, or it could just be a very common word that for some reason wasn’t included in any of the stopword lists we used.
1860-1890 Gothic and Horror Fiction
Gothic Fiction
The Lexos WordCloud visualizations showed that the most common words produced by this method are face, eyes, little, time, dear, and hand. These words seem to be unrelated, but could easily have connections that are just not as obvious at a first glance. For example, it is entirely possible that these stories are heavily laden with facial and bodily imagery meant to place the reader in a more realistic mindset by involving imagery that is easy to picture and relate to. Further, the persistence of time in the visualizations could indicate a sense of urgency in the texts that furthered the suspense of the genre.
As a method of textual analysis, Voyant offers a bigger picture look at the uploaded corpus. For example, besides the WorldClouds, Voyant’s trend timeline (below) is helpful in seeing the comparison of word usage between the entire corpus.
The most common words in the Voyant renderings can be categorized into topics. Facial features (eyes, head, face), descriptive adjectives (old, man, little, boy, round), abstractions (time, long, love, lust, young, mind, life, think), and the surrounding physical world (door, air, house, night, day, room). When the top words are cross-referenced with their contexts, the words take on different meanings than when they are standing alone.The context bar for man is linked below. For example, man is paired with phrases like, “a dark, sallow man” or “it was a spirit, not a man”, or “something in the man that daunted me”. Clearly, corporeal beings are common in Gothic literature of this time and are typically used to elicit fear, discomfort, and uneasiness in the reader while also sometimes acting as vessels for paranormal behavior.
The word little as a common theme is one topic that is confusing because of the vagueness of the term and the numerous possibilities it holds for usage in the works. Based on the context reader in Voyant, the word is most often used to describe physical objects, as expected. However, the word comes off as sinister in nature. For example, using the word little to describe a decrepit little house or church is much more foreboding than when the word is used to describe a distance or a feeling, which it does from time to time. Ultimately, when little is insidiously descriptive, the word elicits a creepier vibe that falls in line with the Gothic tone. The context bar for little is linked below.
Finally, the word cloud from Voyant is pictured below. With time, man, little, and face having the biggest presences in the cloud, it is clear that these words were crucial to the gothic genre from 1860-1890. The prevalence of these words tell us that Gothic literature put emphasis on the passage of time, appropriated descriptors to have different connotations, and focused on the physical body as a way to easily place the reader in the story and provide a relatable experience in the literature
Horror Fiction
The Lexos Multicloud visualization of the three Horror texts from 1860-1890 showed that the most common words are: came, time, looked, saw, house, and great. Additionally, this visualization produced specific categories of words such as:
These results show exactly what could be expected to be found about Horror literature; death, fear, and psychological distress are mainstays. Additionally, the consistency of the occurrence of the word time also fittingly gives off a kind of creepy vibe. Physical appearance/features was also rather unsurprising to see, as things such as facial expressions are key in detailing reaction and allowing the reader to visualize what is taking place.
The Voyant visualization offers a broader, yet similar look at these three works. One difference, and in my opinion advantage, of Voyant is the ability to see the most common words in the texts in one place, as opposed to multiple MultiClouds.
This graph shows the five most common words and the frequency in which they appear across all the texts. I found it very interesting how closely these lines are related. While it certainly is not surprising, due to the fact that there is only three works, but it is surprising that there is not an outlier frequency. More importantly, this graph shows just how connected these works really are to each other.
Here is the WordCloud also produced by Voyant. Due to the small number of texts in this period, I chose to limit the WordCloud to 25 words. The most surprising finding here, and in all these examinations, is the presence of the word great. Because it’s not exactly a word I would associate with Horror or anything I would find horrifying, it is discoveries like this that make doing these tests worthwhile and educational.
Post-1890 Horror Fiction
The Lexos MultiCloud visualization of the ten texts in the post-1890 Horror corpus showed words and themes that appear frequently in the Horror genre. The most common words of the chunked sections fell into the categories of house imagery (house, door, room), body imagery (face, eyes, head), and fearful imagery (monster, torturechamber, terror, cry). This information shows how the Horror genre may use body and house imagery to create an anxiety provoking setting. Each form of imagery proves to be a prominent feature of Horror literature, according to the text analysis. In addition, Lexos showed that these texts use similar words to describe actions. The words suddenly appeared in five of the ten texts in this time period. This implies an element of anxiety that the Horror genre may hope to impress upon the reader. Lexos showed that the most frequent words in this corpus are time, door, room, little, and voice. Two of these words fall into the house imagery category, which again makes it clear that setting is pivotal to this genre.
Voyant yielded similar results to Lexos in many respects, but used different visualizations to show them. Instead of chunking and showing WordClouds for each section, Voyant quickly shows the overarching trends of the post-1890s corpus.
This graph shows the five most frequently words used in this section and which texts they appear most in. Although the other time period corpora differ slightly in the results between Lexos and Voyant, the words here are consistent. One point that Voyant shows, which Lexos does not, is that none of these five words are used in a high volume in The Yellow Sign. After randomly selecting ten texts in each time period, it became apparent that The Yellow Sign was the only text from the 1890s. This tells us that themes of horror were still developing at this time and that horror is more consistent as a whole after 1900.
The word cloud is another visual product of Voyant and demonstrates a similar presence of words that we found in Lexos. After using both tools to analyze this time period, our group realized that Horror texts use a combination of house, body, and fear imagery along with descriptive words to create a treacherous feeling in the reader.
Similarities and Differences Between the Genres
After using Lexos and Voyant to analyze literature in the three time periods, our group has found surprising connections between the Gothic and Horror genres. Our most significant finding is that Gothic literature’s signature tone was suspense, whereas Horror literature’s central theme was fear. We believe this is why the horror genre outlasted the gothic genre well into the 20th century and beyond. The suspenseful Gothic words like surprise and mystery gave way to the more dramatic and fearful Horror words like torture-chamber, terror and monster.
For both genres, the word time was among the top 3 most frequently used words, showing that it continued to play an important role from 1764-1915.The theme of time also provided some interesting correlations to historical events. Big Ben, London’s massive clock tower, was completed in 1854–right at the peak of Gothic literature, and the early stages of the emerging Horror genre. Big Ben is said to have signified “the tick-ticking of life,” (Smith), referring to the high-paced urban lifestyle that grew tremendously leading up to the Industrial Revolution. As society became more obsessed with the precise tracking of time, so did Gothic novels.
Since time is also a frequently used in Horror, both genres could have been impacted by the completion of Big Ben. Although of course there is no concrete proof of a cause-effect relationship, this shows how themes in both genres may have reflected things going on in the real world. This is still something that we see today in literature. Colloquial idioms, patois and parlance can provide insights into the subtle, ever-evolving ways cultures use language–which is part of why tools like Lexos and Voyant are useful.
Another common theme was buildings, comprising words like, “house, castle, door, up/downstairs, windows, and chamber.” This literary theme parallels the urbanization that necessitated the Big Ben clocktower. New buildings, cramming people into cities and organizing society with one common time, all contribute to the urbanization of the time period–which in turn lead to the Industrial Revolution. With the Industrial Revolution thriving for the majority of the publishing years of our corpus, we believe the Horror genre could have emerged because of the general feelings associated with the change of the era. It’s important to consider how urbanization may have helped the development of the Horror genre. The Industrial Revolution lead to great prosperity, but also created social unrest because of the vast division between the rich and the poor. Since there were more people living in one place, the crime rate of cities increased rapidly during this time. People were in fear because of the large amount of riots, public disturbances, and thefts. Simultaneously, the literacy rate was rising, so that more people could read newspapers and novels. It makes sense that they would want to read about themes that were happening all around them.
Although this was not a central part of our project, it shows how the general feeling of fear was present in the real world and in literature. Horror began developing during this time and continued to thrive, while Gothic became less prevalent. Where gothic literature was slow-moving, suspenseful, and mysterious, horror literature was shocking and more graphic. These changes in literature reflect the side-effects of the Industrial Revolution: increased crime, social unrest, and heavy urbanization. Instead of continuing along the Gothic tradition, Horror emerged to replace it and emerged with more passionate and graphic imagery.
The most frequently used word in both genres was little, which was a little surprising (apologies for the pun). This might be significant to the genres in some subtle way we haven’t picked up on–or more likely it could be a very common word that simply wasn’t included in any of the stopword lists we used.
Conclusion
Overall, the findings from our textual analyses were conclusive in showing us both the divisions and the joinings of the genres. While Horror and Gothic literature frequently overlap, the main difference between the two genres lays in the goals of the literature. For horror writers, the purpose of the work was to ultimately frighten. We know this because of the increase in shock words used in those texts like monster, torture-chamber, and terror. In addition to these shock words, strong imagery found in words like hearse and hanged support the idea that horror literature was meant to purely scare the readers. Alternatively, we found that writers of Gothic literature were focused on suspense instead of fright. By using words like old, man, and bodily imagery, writers were able to create eerie tones that, while low in outright fright, were high in suspense and tension.
Taking this one step further, our text analysis also showed that Horror is more detailed when it comes to the body. Body imagery in Gothic texts solely appeared with words such as hand, face, and eyes, whereas Horror texts take the imagery farther by including arms, legs, ears, and feet. This may seem like an insignificant difference, but it alludes to the more graphic and detailed nature of the Horror genre. This analysis has shown us that the key difference between Horror and Gothic is the element of fear. While Gothic strives to create a mysterious and eerie feeling in the reader, the goal of a Horror text is to frighten.
Works Cited
“Crime, Poverty, and Reform.” Victorian Crime and Punishment. E2BN, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Smith, Frank E. “Timeline: 1871 to 1880.” World History Timeline: 19th Century, 1871 to 1880. N.p., 2015. Web. 22 Apr. 2016. <http://www.fsmitha.com/time/ce19-8.htm>.