Gothic Novel as a Tool in Solving Philosophical Issues

The basis of the current study on the features of the Gothic genre in Russian and foreign literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries is based on the experience of previous work on identifying the role of the Gothic tradition as a whole on the basis of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. This study is based on an analysis of the novel of Marquis de Sade "Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue" (1791). This interest is caused by the ambiguity of the Gothic tradition in different linguistic cultures. Our choice fell on major masterpieces, revealing the disruption of the Gothic tradition of the 19th century, in which the diversity of images is on par with the problem of criticism of rationalism. Given the radical changes that took place in society at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: the industrial revolution, the revolution of thinking, the emancipation of women, etc., against the background of all the changes, we would like to consider how literature affected the human mind. Our main goal is to track how the Gothic novel as a philosophical tool influenced the reader’s mind and correlated with the subsequent philosophical ideas of 20th- century.