Carmilla Essay

Usually, fairy tales are in connection to big and illustrious happy endings. But in Edgar Allan Poe’s case, it is evident that they do not exist, for his stories more often than not bear a grotesque demeanor. His life was surrounded by death. All of the women in his life died young, including his mother, sister, and wife. By the age of three, he had experienced what most would not experience until nearly the middle or end of their lives. Living in such an atmosphere allowed Poe to reach deep into his emotions when writing. Edgar Allan Poe was known for his macabre metaphors. These metaphors challenged the reader to endeavor themselves into his simple words; coming to find the gothic elements portrayed. He most commonly portrayed love and death in his poems. Poe is even credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe utilizes symbolism and portrays an envious love tale, ending in tragedy to expose the speaker’s emotional state in the poem “Annabel Lee.”

Gothic Literature is characterized by elements of fear, horror, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality, and high

Gothic literature was a popular writing tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is still used today. Gothic literature explores the wicked, perverse and dark desires. Gothic conventions can include burial alive, ghosts, hysteria, ruined bodies, tales within tales, undead characters, underground spaces, and more. Gothic themes are guilt, sex, violence, death, and cosmic struggle. Gothic stories or poems should inspire terror or horror. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the many well-known Gothic writers. In his stories he uses a variety of themes to carry out the gothic theme.

Various authors develop their stories using gothic themes and characterizations of this type to lay the foundation for their desired reader response. Although Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Peter Taylor’s “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time” are two completely different narratives, both of these stories share a commonality of gothic text representations. The stories take slightly different paths, with Poe’s signifying traditional gothic literature and Taylor approaching his story in a more contemporary manner.

Although Gothic Elements can be very sadistic and twisted the use of it is seen in all types of stories. Some of the more famous stories that Gothic Elements are used in are the following “ A Rose for Emily,” “ The Minister’s Black Veil,” and “ The Tell- Tale Heart”. In these stories, gothic elements are found all over the place do you know why? Well the reason is that all these stories are darker stories than most. Gothic Elements are needed to make a superb scary story.

Gothic Literature is a writing style that has dark setting, it has an overall atmosphere of mystery, exoticism, death. A Gothic story will revolve around a large, ancient house or an obscure setting that conceals a terrible secret or that serves as the refuge of an especially frightening and threatening character

Gothic writers are well known for their works that induce grotesque and demented images to enter a reader’s brain. However, blood and gore is not the only way that Gothic writers can make your skin crawl, and the hair on the back of your neck rise. Gothic literary works contain themes of supernatural occurrences, and entrapment to induce feelings of fear, and mystery into the reader.

Edgar Allan Poe is a famous well known writer known for his dark and gothic horror stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and many others. The well-known author had a rough life which dealt with a lot of death, so most of his stories revolve around this idea. In “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death” Poe uses similar themes or darkness to convey tone and conflict throughout the story. His writing style is dark and revolves around one main concept: death. Edgar Allan Poe uses diction and syntax, setting and conflict, and characterization in his writing style to develop his stories.

Gothic literature has been criticized as being a dreary, dark, and death-involving subset of Romanticism (a literary movement accentuating human individuality, imagination, and subjectivity). In addition, gothic lit incorporates several themes- not all about deathly acts - but includes some emotional and surprising themes such as dreams, nightmares, or hallucinations, and grotesque or bizarre occurrences. Two short stories, both written by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Raven,” and “The Black Cat,” as well as the novel The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, all encompass these gothic elements, found throughout each story.

Gothic literature uses wide ranging themes and gothic elements to convey its story. Gothic literature short stories can range from romance to horror to supernatural occurrences. Horacio Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow,” Richard Matheson’s “Prey,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” all incorporate the following gothic elements: violence, revenge, hallucinations, nightmares, and psychological issues.

Gothic literature has a different way of captivating the reader. Page by Page, gothic themes are present that create mystery and evoke suspense. The Night Circus, a novel by Eric Morgenstern, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, by Washington Irving, and “The Oval Portrait”, by Edgar Allan Poe share two important themes: eerie setting and isolation. All the stories connect through a lesson that passion can become harmful.

     The term Gothic refers to a genre that came about in the late eighteenth century. It can be a type of story, clothing, or music nowadays. In this paper it will refer to a style of literature. A very good example of this type of literature is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. There is a sense of foreboding throughout the whole novel, which is one of the basic necessities of the Gothic. This theme of the Gothic has different characteristics that all fit into the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monster and make this one of the first horror stories every told.

Edgar Allan Poe, renowned as the foremost master of the short-story form of writing, chiefly tales of the mysterious and macabre, has established his short stories as leading proponents of “Gothic” literature. Although the term “Gothic” originally referred only to literature set in the Gothic (or medieval) period, its meaning has since been extended to include a particular style of writing. In order for literature to be “Gothic,” it must fulfill some specific requirements. Firstly, it must set a tone that is dark, somber, and foreboding. Next, throughout the development of the story, the events that occur must be strange, melodramatic, or often sinister. Poe’s short stories are

The two short stories “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) by Washington Irving, and “Carmilla” (1872) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be compared as Gothic fiction that is written in the same time period. As writers, Le Fanu and Irving incorporate the use of gothic language and imagery in order to accentuate the gothic elements; death, and the supernatural in their stories.

Picture this. The father of modern crime and detective stories, known as Edgar Allan Poe, is sitting down about to write a beautiful piece of writing and BAM! He whisks away into a story of love, death, and just plain out horror; either characters are losing someone near and dear to their hearts or they are plotting to kill. Edgar Allan Poe, at a very young age, lost both of his parents, and later on in life, lost his wife to tuberculosis, so in one way or another, these stories reflect off of his personal experiences. A major theme in Poe’s writings is death. The theme of death is seen throughout the works of Annabel Lee, the Cask of Amontillado, the Raven, and the Black Cat.