Gothic visions of classical architecture in Hablot Knight Browne’s “dark” illustrations for the novels of Charles Dickens

Janes, Dominic (2014) Gothic visions of classical architecture in Hablot Knight Browne’s “dark” illustrations for the novels of Charles Dickens. Gothic Studies 16 (2), pp. 33-51. ISSN 2050-456X.

Abstract

In the early gothic literature of the eighteenth century danger lurked in the darkness beneath the pointed arches of gothic buildings. During the nineteenth century there was a progressive, although never complete, dislocation of gothic literary readings from gothic architecture. This article explores a phase in that development through discussion of a series of ‘dark’ illustrations produced by Hablot Knight Browne to illustrate novels by Charles Dickens. These show the way in which the rounded arches of neo-classical architecture were depicted in the mid-nineteenth century as locales of oppression and obscurity. Such depictions acted, in an age of political and moral reform, to critique the values of the system of power and authority that such architecture represented.

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