Gothic Elements Of Gothic Literature

The Castle of Otranto was written in 1764, by Horace Walpole. This novel is a Gothic novel, and I will be writing an essay about this novel to show, and explain how Gothic it is. I will be picking a specific character to explain and compare to another book to show how both are Gothic, but in their own way. This essay will seek and unfold the differences of Manfred in Otranto, and General Tilney in Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. When Northanger Abbey was written is

Horace Walpole can be accredited with the creation of the horror genre and specific characteristics like a “…foreign location, a dark and ominous castle, and a naïve young woman fleeing from an evil, lustful man.” Walpole’s most well know work, The Castle of Otranto, has set a precedent for being the first novel that made fictitious horror popular and has also become the basis for all other horror literature and film. An associate professor at the Federated University of Australia by the name of Meg Tasker, who was noted in the BBC magazine article, The Castle of Otranto: The creepy tale that launched gothic fiction, says that Walpole took inspiration from “a whole range of literary sources and folklore, German as well as English and Scottish”. The BBC’s magazine also notes that works by William Shakespeare held influence over Walpole and his novel with the addition of satire and comic relief to break up the more melodramatic heavy moments within the novel. With Walpole’s novel being the catalyst, it influenced a number of writers from Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen

Gothic can be defined as “literature dealing with the strange, mysterious, and supernatural designed to invoke suspense and terror in the reader.” (Pickering, 2004, p. 1425) Gothic literature generally presents the same themes and motifs: love lost, hidden secrets, love and death hand in hand, beauty, youth, grotesque characters, macabre eroticism, etc. Gothic literature also explores taboo subjects such as murder, suicide and incest. “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, is representative of the Southern Gothic stories since the themes of love lost, death, and murder are present in it. There are many elements that hint at the Gothic nature of the story: Emily’s description, her house, the poison she bought, and finally the ending.

Brown does not rely on most of the conventions of the gothic literature. Brown does use conventions of a Gothic genre. Brown follows the topics shared in an American Gothic novel. Allan Lloyd-Smith talks about how many American Gothic writers would exchange key aspects that can be seen in a European gothic novel. For example, instead of a castle the setting of the novel will include a remote house in the country side away from most of the population. Brown does not include a great deal of the setting but uses atmosphere and suspense to inflict fear into his readers. Brown stays away from the European gothic conventions discussed in “The Gothic Novel”. Brown does not include castles, dungeon and does not place his gothic novel in the medieval

Gothic literature, which is sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre that links horror and romance into one tale of ‘transgressing the boundaries’. Gothicism was unheard of until the late 1700’s, this movement into a new genre of literature. This was pioneered by the English author Horace Walpole, in his famous fictional book ‘The Castle of Otranto’, or as Walpole alternatively titled it ‘a Gothic story’. Horace Walpole himself had transgressed the boundaries slightly; by introducing this new style of writing he had added a whole new genre into literature. Walpole’s style of writing was unique and captivated the readers mind and

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 contains many thematic elements such as horror, death, and even at times romanticism. This type of literature incorporates various different elements, in order to evoke the emotions of terror. There are many authors who are extremely talented and are still remembered and read in classrooms today. These are authors like Edgar Allan Poe, best known for his mysterious poems and short stories, Richard Matheson and Horacio Quiroga, who have all incorporated psychological problems and violence themes in their short stories in order to fascinate the readers and add suspense to the story. These three gothic authors correlate the themes of violence and the psychological/ mental issues in order to depict anticipation and terror

An important feature of gothic is the horror and terror seen within the text. The two were differentiated by Anne Radcliffe who suggests that terror relies on subtle suggestion which results in the creation of tension and fear, whilst horror is direct and explicit and causes instant fear. A good example of terror is an example of the pathetic fallacy used at the start of chapter 5, during the creation of the monster. It is described as a ‘dreary night of November’ and that the ‘rain pattered dismally against the panes’. This slowly builds tension and helps portray a sense of foreboding. Examples of horror include the ‘yellow eye’ of the monster as it infers decay and the ‘grave worms crawling in the folds of the flannel’ in Victor’s dream about his mother. These features of gothic would have been especially effective on a Victorian audience, as they were not often confronted with this sort of imagery, whereas it can be argued overexposure has caused modern audiences to be less sensitive, or desensitized, to this kind of content.

The Gothic genre often reproduces a conservative paranoid structure when it comes to homophobia and other moral panics over sex (Hanson, Pg. 176). Eve Sedgwick depicts this in her work, ‘Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosexual Desire’ as she discusses how these ideas (paranoia) are represented within the Gothic, in what she describes as the ‘homosocial’ in reference to male bonds (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). She also discusses how bonds between men exist as the backbone of social form and forms (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). Thus, a consequence of said structure is the ability to define, control, and manipulate male bonds, which in turn becomes an inexplicably powerful instrument of social control (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). Thus, homosexuality is represented as the ‘unspeakable’ within the Gothic, as it has been defined, controlled, and manipulated to be such though social control. Therefore, this paper will discuss how ‘homosocial’ bonds between men, are used as a tool in social control and used as a way to produce paranoia and moral panic, thus in reference to the Gothic, these forms epitomize homosexuality as the ‘unspeakable,’ especially through homosexual representations within the contexts of ghosts and haunted houses.

Throughout the course of history, literature has gone through considerable changes. Dating back to its humble beginnings in folklore, fables, and storytelling all the way up to the scientific books and dramatic novels of today. Literature is arguably the centerpiece of all mankind. It is useful for record keeping, education, and bringing cultures and societies together. It has allowed us to expand our minds by painting a picture of the beautiful places this world has to offer outside of our corners of the earth. One genre of literature I find especially intriguing is Southern Gothic Literature. It is a subclass of gothic fiction, specifically set

The gothic literary movement is a part of the larger Romantic Movement. Gothic literature shares many of the traits of romanticism, such as the emphasis on emotions and the imagination. Gothic literature goes beyond the melancholy evident in most romantic works, however, and enters into the areas of horror and decay, becoming preoccupied with death. “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe is a powerful example of gothic fiction, whereas James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans serves as the romantic predecessor, illustrating the differences and the similarities between romantic and gothic literature.

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, is acknowledged by many as the first gothic novel. It was the first of it’s kind and many of the conventions used by Walpole, which put it in a literary genre of it’s own, were continued by authors such as Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. Many of these defining characteristics can be seen within the very first few pages of the text and for the purposes of this essay, to identify some of these conventions used and the relevance of this text to modernity I shall focus this analysis on the passage between pages twenty-four and twenty-six from the Oxford World’s Classics edition.

Gothic literature includes elements of style that is usually portrayed in tales and deals with horror, despair, the grotesque, and mysteries. In the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, there are many elements of gothic literature that is found throughout the book. The term gothic is very broad in literature, and gothic can mean many different things from characteristics of people, feelings and reactions of a specific setting, mood, actions that happen being people, and so much more. All of this thrived in the 19th century. Gothic is categorized by an emphasis on the dark, gloomy, and mysterious. Ideas such as magic, hidden passages, wind, ghosts, and other supernatural elements, love, etc were all elements in the Gothic movement during the 19th century. Specifically, the descriptions of the settings, both outside and inside, in the novel, the actions of the main protagonists in the novel, and the love between Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights all add on to this idea of a gothic literature or tradition.

The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel written by Horace Walpole. It is regarded as the first Gothic novel, initiating a new literary genre which became extremely popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.