Introduction Ever since Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1765), the characteristic setting and plot of Gothic novels have always been the same: a medieval fortress of some sort, an abbey or a supposedly haunted mansion, while the story can be summed up by one of Ann Radcliffe’s protagonists in A Sicilian Romance, as “innocent blood which has been shed in the castle, whose walls are still the haunt of an unquiet spirit”. The two documents of this dossier indeed explore the mechanisms of Gothic fiction: Radcliffe’s extract from The Mysteries of Udolpho, probably her most famous novel and an epitome of the genre, deals with the main character (Emily)’s frightful confrontation with a mysterious intruder in her bedroom late at night. Though she wrote it much later, Emily Brontë also used elements of Gothic literature in Wuthering Heights, as one of the novel’s most memorable and vivid episodes is when Lockwood, Heathcliff’s new tenant, is visited by the ghost of the latter’s former love, Catherine Earnshaw. Our analysis will thus examine these extracts as structured on confusion and illusion, not only as main themes but as textual background and dynamics. We shall first focus on the Gothic topoi and topography as represented in the two documents; then we will consider the links between confusion and unbridled imagination, and finally we will ponder on the notion of physical and textual exploration. Plan I) “Frightful nightmare” and “disturbed slumber”: Gothic Topoi and Topography a. The creation of a frightening atmosphere Nightly setting in both documents: night is the propitious moment for supernatural manifestations; also presence of natural elements in Brontë’s text suggesting violence and terror (“the gusty wind”, “the driving of the snow”). Both novels take place in old, ancient places: a remote castle for Radcliffe, an old, almost derelict house in WH. Geographical location= source of fear and apprehension. Fear also produced through the main character’s situation: distress and apprehension; Lockwood and Emily; image of the damsel in distress used by Radcliffe but slightly distorted concept with Brontë as the victim of irrational fears is a man (so the woman in distress might be the ghost child outside) b. “Ghost and goblins”: archetypal scenes? Theme of the Uncanny, with strange, disturbing sounds: noises (“its teasing sound”, “ a feeble scratching” Brontë, “a return of the noise”, “the undrawing of rust