Cognitive Castles: Place and The Castle of Otranto

Introduction Place in gothic horror has traditionally been studied through a combination of historical and psychological perspectives. These perspectives provide valuable insight, since they examine the historical origins and meanings of places, such as the medieval castle and the subterranean tunnel. However, the role of evolved human biology, as explored through such fields as cognitive science, environmental aesthetics, and environmental psychology, has not been connected to these studies of place. For example, authors of gothic capitalize on reader's perception that dark locations where sight is limited are negative, scary, and potentially dangerous, but human dependence on sight as the evolved primary means of human orientation has not been analyzed in connection to the literary representation of scary and potentially dangerous places. In addition, the human role in constructing place based on understandings, such as the shared mental material of common historical narratives and its connection to social learning as an evolved cognitive trait, has not been considered. Tracing the development of the subversive and revolutionary elements of the gothic castle and their contrast to neoclassical ideals generates historical information about place that often informs the critical examination of texts. Evolutionary perspectives offer to connect the specific narratives of historical criticism with the adapted function of narrative thinking. Historical accounts help to satisfy the adapted need for creating meaning, which expedites decision-making and orientation for humans in complex and dynamic surroundings. Human dependence on narrative as an organizational structure that functions to include and exclude information mediates the perception of locations. For example, shared historical narratives inform the construction of the medieval castle in that the perceived excessive, emotional, and transgressive 2 qualities of place are linked to physical descriptions through these shared accounts. The association of physical, intellectual, and emotional content with the physical elements of an area allows for condensing enormous amounts of information into more easily handled units. Furthermore, cognitive perspectives, such as the one presented by Nancy Easterlin in A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation, show people to be as much a part of the environment as trees, water, mountains, and other natural phenomenon. Not only are people and other species a part of place, but people and their adapted human minds are intrinsically related to the representations of place in literature in that they also construct place based on evolved human needs. Moreover, human perception, cognition, and experience in construction or representation of environment …