Dennett on the gothic

[sawyl]

Reading Consciousness Explained, yes I know I read way too much, I came across the following comment about gothic novels:

Are we better or worse off for this shift in perspective? The shift [in love] is not uniform, of course. While naive adults continue to raise gothic romances to the top of the best-seller list, we sophisticated readers find we have rendered ourselves quite immune to the intended effects of such books: they make us giggle, not cry. Or if they do make us cry — as sometimes they do, in spite of ourselves — we are embarrassed to discover that we are still susceptible to such cheap tricks; for we cannot readily share the mind-set of the heroine who wastes away worrying about whether she has found "true love" — as if this were some sort of distinct substance (emotional gold as opposed to emotional brass or copper). This growing up is not just in the individiual. Our culture has become more sophisticated — or at least sophistication, whatever it is worth, is more widely spread through the culture. As a result, our concepts of love have changed, and with these changes come shifts in sensibility that now prevent us from having certain experiences that thrilled, devastated, or energized our ancestors (Dennett 1991).

This exactly mirrors a comment of mine about The Castle of Otranto: I found that, in parts at least, it read more like an absurd farce, like something by Beaumarchais, than a horror novel and found myself giggling rather than experiencing feelings of terror.