Gothic Tropes: Found Document Framing Device

Usually, when discussing tropes in Gothic literature, I talk about certain recurring themes and plot elements (such as madness, prophecies, or burning houses) or character types (like the Creepy Housekeeper, Corrupted Clergy, or First Wife). But the genre also makes use of particular structural or stylistic techniques. One of my favorite stylistic tropes in Gothic literature is the found document framing device.

In literature, a “found document” refers to when the text of the story is presented as though it comes from an actual document that was discovered and assembled by either someone in the story or an outside observer. A frame story is when one story is used to introduce another. In this case, an introduction (and/or sometimes a closing) is used to explain who found and assembled the document of the story and for what purpose. Presenting a story as a found document can serve a variety of goals. Usually, readers are aware that this technique is a fictional framing device created by the author, but sometimes authors have managed to successfully pass off their tale as a record of true events. Either way, purporting to be a found document gives the story at the very least the illusion of credibility. It also adds a sense of historicity, contributing to the atmosphere of “long ago and far away.” Framing the story as a found document can be used to obscure the true author’s identity or to distance them from the content that they’ve written. This technique can even be used to serve the plot—such as by incorporating the first-hand perspectives of multiple different characters. The found document framing device has been part of Gothic literature since its very beginnings and was particularly popular during the nineteenth century. Below are a few of my favorite examples:

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The found document framing device was used in the book commonly regarded as the very first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764). I’ve touched on the publication history of this novel before, in my post on anonymity and pseudonyms in Gothic literature. Walpole is one of those authors who used the found document technique to obscure is own identity and also to create a false sense of historical authenticity. The first edition of the novel, published under a fake name, contained a preface detailing an elaborate backstory for the document. According to the preface, the author had discovered and translated an Italian manuscript first printed in 1529 and believed to have originally been written several centuries earlier. The preface uses this historical context to excuse the more fantastical elements of the story, which would have been unfashionable in contemporary fiction. In the preface, the author also uses his pretended objectivity as an unbiased third party to assert his belief that the story that follows is at least somewhat based on true events. Several of Walpole’s early readers were taken in by the gimmick and genuinely believed the story to have come from a medieval manuscript. But others were not so easily fooled, and Walpole eventually came clean and published the novel under his own name for the second edition. This literary device was particularly fitting for Walpole, who as a hobbyist antiquarian spent much of his free time collecting genuine medieval manuscripts and artefacts. It was this collection and his general interest in the medieval period, no doubt, that inspired Walpole to present his story as belonging to the past.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was a British author at the forefront of a new genre that was developing out of the Gothic in the mid-nineteenth century: the mystery novel. More specifically, Collins’s 1868 novel The Moonstone is often considered to be the first modern detective novel, as one of its central characters is a professional detective, Sergeant Cuff. In this case, the literary technique of found documents is used to pursue the narrative goal unique to this genre: solving a mystery. In the opening chapters, Franklin Blake explains that he wants to assemble a document that will lay out the truth about what happened to the moonstone by collecting the first-person accounts of multiple people involved. Each narrative contains different clues that ultimately paint a full picture of the night the moonstone was stolen and the events that followed. Through letters, family papers, and written accounts intentionally given by the characters, the reader receives over half a dozen different points of view, each with varying levels of reliability. Unlike with The Castle of Otranto, the reader of The Moonstone would not necessarily have been expected to buy into the idea that these documents actually existed in the real world, but would instead feel the vicarious thrill of the detective by constructing the solution to a mystery out of clues from disparate sources.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu

J. Sheridan le Fanu’s early vampire novella Carmilla shows us yet another motive for using the found document framing device. Carmilla was first published in 1872 as part of a collection called In a Glass Darkly, which also contained the novella The Room in the Dragon Volant along with three short stories. Each of these tales starts with a prologue explaining that they came from the casebook of an occult detective named Dr. Hesselius. Thus, the found document framing device is used to create a meta-narrative around the fictional detective that unites the otherwise unrelated stories in this collection. In Carmilla, specifically, the story is presented as though the protagonist, Laura, has written an account of her experience with the vampire Carmilla for Dr. Hesselius’s benefit, years after the events of the story. With the hindsight that this perspective provides, Laura is able to note the sinister clues to Carmilla’s true nature that she initially overlooked.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

And, of course, I can’t talk about this trope without discussing one of the most famous examples of it. Like The Moonstone, Dracula is an epistolary novel—written entirely in journal entries, letters, and newspaper clippings. Also like The Moonstone, there are references within the story to these papers intentionally being compiled into a single document to serve a narrative purpose. Initially, Mina types up her own journal entries and Jonathan’s to provide Dr. Van Helsing with the necessary backstory so that he can figure out what is wrong with Lucy. As the mystery deepens and the vampiric attacks continue, Mina encourages other characters to document their experiences and provide their journals to her to type up. When the party decides to hunt down Count Dracula, Mina assembles all of their accounts along with relevant newspaper clippings to search for clues to his whereabouts. In a closing note to the story, Jonathan Harker looks over their written account of these extraordinary events and muses over whether it might serve as proof to show to others. Dracula is a particularly unique example of a found document in which the characters are continually interacting with the document itself, referencing its creation, and repeatedly justifying its existence.

What do you think of this trope? Do you like stories that are presented as found documents? What other examples have you come across? Let me know in the comments!