As part of the quest to see how subgenres may have begun to branch off from the Gothic, which is closely related to both my earlier post and Dan’s recent one, I looked at a short list of Gothic novels that might be precursors to Horror.

For this Woodchipper analysis, I decided to limit the number of texts I would compare. (I ran these tests early on, before I was very familiar with woodchipper and at that time I was finding it very confusing to run more than a couple novels at a time.) I wondered if I could find one very typical example of the Gothic Horror and one very typical example of the Gothic non-Horror to see what they looked like side-by-side. I wanted to find the overlap and the divergences, thinking that they might be compared to the divergences Dan found in the runs he was doing simultaneously with Science Fiction. A bonus to this approach was that I would first have to determine if my groups (Gothic and Gothic Horror) even held up in Woodchipper.

First, I ran some tests on a core group of Gothic texts, which our group had established as “most Gothic.”

• The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Vampyre by John Polidori
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

 *The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was also on our list but not yet available in Woodchipper

I ran these texts against each other to get a sense of what Woodchipper would make of the Gothic. I found that the texts overlapped pretty well.

Ultimately, I decided to use Mysteries of Udolpho as my “most Gothic” text because its pattern seemed to most align with the others and also because it fit into my “Gothic non-Horror” category.

Then I chose my Horror subset of the Gothics. In addition to my sub-group’s consensus on what made horror I consulted Amazon and Goodreads, to determine which of our Gothic novels are popularly considered as such. This research led to a short list of Gothic Horror texts.

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Collected Stories of HP Lovecraft
• Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Varney the Vampyre by Thomas Preskett Prest

In my woodchipper runs, I was looking to see if they would align well. I also hoped, of course, to find one text to use as an example of them all.

Related to this runs I made the following observations:

1. Frankenstein is the most divergent of this group. It pulls away largely with what I called its “existential” concerns. (life, death, existence, mind, heart)
2. The Lovecraft collection fits my stereotypes of horror best, according to Woodchipper, but it looks like an exaggeration of the other texts. It has a lot of the same lines, but they go further out. (You have to make sure its dots go on the bottom or you won’t be able to see anything else.)
3. The four that best match are Jekyl/Hyde, Dorian Gray, Varney, and Dracula.

I decided to use Varney the Vampyre as my example of a typical Gothic Horror, so I ran it against The Mysteries of Udolpho. I was not blown away by the results. Varney took some topics a bit further out than Udolpho, but didn’t diverge much beyond that.

 

So, what the heck, I figured I’d try out H.P. Lovecraft’s collected stories. Perhaps the most extreme and exaggerated Horror of my small collection would tell me something more interesting.

Ah! Well there are some nice divergences. Finally. So in Lovecraft, I have found some potential genre sprouts, as predicted by Moretti in “Trees.” Perhaps further investigation and a closer look at the texts could find more evidence of smaller sprouts–too small for my very limited runs–in Varney, the Vampyre or some of my other Gothic Horrors.

I seem to have learned a lot more from my earlier groupings, of 5 Gothic novels and then of 6 Horror, then from running example Gothic against example Horror. Instead, I learned some of the drawbacks of pitting texts one-on-one. It’s too easy for one text’s idiosyncrasies to take over–you may get some ideas, but you are certainly not going to prove anything.

I have not taken this investigation as far as it will go. In fact, I consider it a short, side adventure. But I’m sharing it because I think it illustrates another approach to using Woodchipper–drawbacks and all.

 

While trying to use Woodchipper to come up with a definition of the Gothic, I was also interested in looking at Gothic literature as spawning numerous forms of popular literature, namely Mystery, Horror, and Science Fiction. Mystery and Horror, at least from the outset, seem like straightforward extensions of elements already present in the Gothic. Science fiction, on the other hand, branches off in different, and I would argue more interesting, ways.

I derive most of my assumptions and questions from this article. Brantlinger focuses on science fiction’s origins in Gothic literature. Like the Gothic, sci-fi questions the limits of rationalization. Both genres emphasize the sublime, namely fear and wonder, to arouse terror. They also favor subjectivity over objectivity, viewing the nature of the universe as essentially unknowable, and therefore we can only determine our own separate accounts; this theme, especially for the Gothic, comes through its epistolary format.

Most importantly, Gothic and sci-fi both take reason to its extreme limit in order to reveal the point where the rules break down. In both genres, this scenario can only lead to disaster. The difference is that for gothic texts, this disaster usually takes place internally, while in science fiction it becomes external. So, in analyzing my findings, another major topic to watch out for would be interiority versus exteriority, and well as the personal versus the societal.

I ran Frankenstein (considered by many to be the first sci-fi novel) and The Time Machine by Wells (one of the fathers of sci-fi) with other Gothic texts and with each other. I also hope to use Verne (the other father of sci-fi) and Poe, who wrote some of the first sci-fi stories and had a huge influence on the genre. I only have enough space here to focus on a few interesting results. Obviously, running two early science fiction / gothic texts alone against thirty or so gothic texts cannot yield definitive results. However, perhaps in conjunction with my own analysis, Woodchipper could offer a useful lens for observing trends between and within these genres, as well as introducing new questions for future runs.

With this in mind, I’ll present my first run: Frankenstein and Caleb Williams:

 

While there is a fair amount of overlap, Caleb favors the Crime/Justice topic, and what Kathryn categorized as the “Sublime” (“man,” “life,” “nature,” “character,” “mind”), although this is less clear, while Frankenstein leans more toward the “Existential” (or “Spiritual”) topic (“life,” “death,” “existence,” “mind,” “heart”). Does this address my questions? Not so much. On the one hand, most of these categories leans more toward interiority than exteriority. So, from these results, Frankenstein doesn’t offer much evidence for science fiction’s emphasis on the social and even cosmic. On the other hand, these categories also privilege subjectivity (especially “seemed” in an alternate run), which aligns with both the Gothic and sci-fi. But, again, Frankenstein has a lot in common with Caleb, and while they diverge in certain respects, these differences appear to have more to do with each novel’s own respective foci rather than an indication of genre. Moreover, Caleb’s deep engagement with the political (which Frankenstein also shares) may signify the work as atypical of its genre, although Woodchipper only represents this aspect here through the Crime/Justice category (without specifying the type of justice: personal or societal).

Another important note: while many texts in my runs tend to densely populate certain topics, Frankenstein is comparatively scattered. Does this make Frankenstein harder to pin down and categorize than other Gothic texts, and is that a clue that it shares another genre: science fiction? It’s too difficult to tell, especially when none of the topics here clearly points to science fiction.

Turning to The Time Machine, I ran the text with The Beetle, which contains a few supernatural elements, such as shape-shifting:

The Time Machine was difficult to use because its own terms and jargon—“Time Traveller,” “morlocks,” ect.—clutter the results. In this pairing, however, both texts are concerned with observation and information-gathering. Two topics leave room for ambiguity and subjectivity (“seemed” appears in both). The other, “told,” “asked,” “knew,” “see,” “thought,” alludes to more concrete evidence. Interestingly, this is where the texts overlap the most. Thus, at least from this run, it appears that while The Beetle is interested in all forms of observation, The Time Machine is more concerned with objectivity.

Choosing a random sample passage quickly complicates this tentative conclusion, however.

The Time Traveller’s privileging of objective reality (“I know it was a dull white”) must yield to his uncertainty (“too fast to see distincly,” “I cannot even say . . .”). In the end, reason gets him nowhere, and he must admit to the unreliability of his senses. This is often what science fiction is all about: the friction between the objective and “scientific” versus the subjective and unknown. Woodchipper can’t really pick up on this, as it can only group common and repeating words together without interpretation.

Another important note: it doesn’t occur here, but the “Cosmic” or “Celestial” (“light, moon, sun, sky, sea”) frequently appears when I run The Time Machine with other texts. Even though Wells’ novel doesn’t deal with spaceflight or space directly, one can see the genre’s fascination with the stars.

Finally, let’s look at the two early science fiction texts together:

Frankenstein appears to have broader concerns than The Time Machine. The former dominates “Justice” and the “Sublime” (with overlap), while the latter stays with the “Cosmic.” However, a new category also appears: “work, science, time, knowledge, life.” I wouldn’t call this the “Science Fiction” category by any means, but does it gesture in that direction? If my results tell me anything at all, it is that separating the gothic from gothic sci-fi is, fittingly, extremely difficult. While Frankenstein branches toward many categories, it appears to have far more in common with Gothic literature than it would science fiction. The Time Machine shies away from the Existential or even the subjective, but as demonstrated there is a lot more going on here not represented in these results alone.

Right now, my questions are: Can Woodchipper distinguish the Gothic from science fiction, and can it recognize sci-fi within the Gothic? Going forward, perhaps Verne and Poe will help illuminate possible trends, but I suspect that only through a juxtaposition with later, non-Gothic science fiction works will a fuller picture present itself.

Brantlinger identifies a trend in more recent science fiction in favor of the rational and “realistic” as opposed to the imaginative. According to Brantlinger, this focus runs counter to science fiction’s origins in the Gothic. At what point, then, if this trend exists at all, did sci-fi cease its critique of the rational and objective and begin to glorify them? Is Woodchipper capable of addressing this question? If so, I’d like to know the answer.