The Gothic Genre Of Gothic Novels

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.

Gothic literature is a literary genre that began in england in the late 1700’s that “Gothic” refers to medieval buildings, such as castles that were seen typically as dark, dreary, gloomy and mysterious which inspired a mood for many books. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a good of example of gothic literature because it had a gloomy tone commonly found in most gothic literature. This can be found in the first paragraph when the narrator says “ a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”. This shows“The Fall of the House of Usher” is gothic literature because it sets up a gothic tone in the first paragraph.

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 has its origins from the Germanic tribes who invaded and plundered Rome and other European nations during the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. The word Gothic became connected to words like barbaric and savage and was integrated into the Middle ages due to the time period itself being referred to as unenlightened and superstitious (Architecture). Its first entrance into literature occurred in Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto which was quickly used by other artists for their literary works. There are many small characteristics that distinguish Gothic literature, though the largest features that describe Gothic literature are

These dark overtones and internal tensions laid the foundation perfectly for the development of the gothic novel. The fear of the unknown are represented in Radcliffe’s gothic novel as the mystery surrounding the fates of other women. Once Emily has found out the truth about the other women, then she is freed of her fears and is able to cope with them. In a very real way she has made the transition to confidence in herself and her own future. This particular brand of gothic novel seems to be an encouragement to women and reassures them.

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.

In Gothic literature the setting is very important since it adds secrecy, darkness, and suspense. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and “Sir Bertrand” by Anna Letitia Aikin and John Aikin are Gothic stories that go in depth explaining these examples. Both of these stories create that sense, since they both take place in a castle where abnormal events occur that cannot be explained. The architectural elements of the stories create a mood of terror due to darkness and mystery. This helps further the plot because it influences the actions of the characters.

Gothic literature is no laughing matter, well at least to everyone besides Horace Walpole. What Walpole started as joke became one of the most notable genres in literary history. It inspired multiple popular novels and tv shows today such as the Twilight series or Supernatural. Gothic literature is characterized by multiple aspects: archetypes, an ominous setting, a mysterious atmosphere. These are all elements present in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” all being used to support the theme of guilt.

Gothic fiction is a genre of literature that is comprised of numerous particular elements. It is a subgenre of romanticism and can be conflated with dark romanticism. This flavor of writing was most popular from the late eighteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. The name gothic fiction relates to gothic European architecture built during the middle ages. Massive cathedrals and castles were erected with pointed, stained-glass windows,

The first pieces of gothic fiction that were constructed were novels and literature pieces by writers from the 1700s. A tale called “The Castle of Otranto” was the first official story to be classified under the gothic genre. It was published in 1764 by Horace Walpole. It was a tale about the fictional “Prince of Otranto” falling hopelessly in love with the woman destined to marry his son and heir to the throne. During the beginning of the novel, Otranto’s son gets crushed to death by a helmet of a statue of the previous Prince of Otranto. The novel sees everything in and including the walls of the castle become supernaturally alive, until all wicked actions and behaviour was destroyed. People in the 18th century who were reading this text felt deceived and that they had been wronged when they found out the novel was a fragment of someone’s imagination, and in fact fiction. This was because the stories presented in this time had all been real and portrayed as non fiction, this was the first time a piece of literature, that wasn’t a poem, was fictional. Later, in the 1790s some novelists rediscovered some of the themes and elements that were present in “The Castle of Otranto”. One novel produced in 1794 was “The Mysteries of Udolpho” written by Ann Radcliffe. The tale was based upon a dignified villain who threatens the heroine Emily with an unimaginable

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

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.

Gothic literature has an incredibly vast and important history. It is based off of gothic architecture and became a genre in literature in the late 1700s. This genre was created by the rejection of predictability and this sent writers to the “murky past”, The Middle Ages, to write about (Snodgrass). Overall, this time period provided substantial inspiration for gothic literature because it was highly contrasting with its prominent improvements and horrible crimes. Later on, in the 18th century, gothic literature evolved from being about the Middle Ages to current problems with contemporary culture and social problems of the specific time era. Each time period and each different place in the world had different subjects that gothic literature

Gothic novels are stories written in the gothic genre which is a literature genre of fiction characterized by an atmosphere of mystery and horror. This genre rose to, and flourished in, popularity during the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the most famous novels of this Genre is Frankenstein, also known as the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley. Frankenstein is about a scientist who creates a grotesque sentient monster in an unorthodox science experiment. Other examples of popular Gothic books include; The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, Dracula by Bram Stoker, and The Monk: A Romance by Matthew Lewis. The Gothic genre, as well as most

Gothic literature originated and was very strong at the time of the Romantic Writers Movement. They were very popular and had authors such as Horace Walpole who wrote “The Castle of Oranto”, and novels such as “Frankenstein” and “Dracula“. Gothic novels all had a similarity between each other. They always had typical Gothic features which alleviated the novel in one way or another. For example, most Gothic novels involved settings which generally added fear and suspense. They were always quite dark, scary and isolated. Also the characters of the Gothic novels never seemed to fit in the community and the society. They usually were handicapped, disabled or deformed