Gothic Riffs: Secularizing the Uncanny in the European Imaginary, 1780–1820

Abstract

Breughel's epic canvas The Battle of Car- nival and Lent (1566), depicts the denizens of an early modern european village engaged in a variety of activities that would have occurred on that specific day of transition including, off in the upper left corner, gawking at a public performance of the popular carnival pantomime Valentine and Orson.This 1489 French legendary tale concerns the adventures of noble twin brothers who have been separated at birth, one of them raised in the wild by a she-bear, the other brought up as a prince at court.This tale was so popular that it was first transformed into a street play and then chapbook form, in which it spread throughout european culture for three hundred years. in 1794 it was adapted as a melodrama by Thomas Dibdin, who altered the plot in a significant way. he has the two brothers meet by accident in the forest as adults, the cultivated valentine serving wine to the bear-mother so that she dies, leaving Orson desolate (i.v). it is no coincidence that Valentine and Orson was typically performed by traveling troupes on the cusp of the religious calendar, during that period when carnival excess becomes Lenten penance and abstinence. in telling a tale that foregrounds a variety of transitions (from rural to urban; from We never saw more interest excited in a theatre than was expressed at the sorcery-scene in the third act [of Coleridge's gothic drama Remorse (1813)].The altar flaming in the distance, the solemn invocation, the pealing music of the mystic song, altogether producing a combination so awful, as nearly to overpower reality, and make one half believe the enchantment which delighted our senses.