Gothic fiction Part 1

 

Gothic fiction

Gothic fiction (sometimes called Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. It is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.

 

A)     Some Famous Gothic Novels

The first gothic romances (18th century)

The term "Gothic" was used precisely because the genre dealt with emotional extremes and dark themes, and was often set in the buildings of this style (castles, mansions, and monasteries, often isolated, crumbling, and ruined).

 

The Romantics (beginning of the 19th century)

Lord Byron was another inspiration for the Gothic as well as Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein (1818) and Polidori who wrote The Vampyre (1819). The Vampyre has been a very influential work of fiction: people became crazy about vampire stories. And Mary Shelley's novel is often regarded as the first science fiction novel.

 

Victorian Gothic

The Victorians didn't denounce mediaeval obscurantism, they praised the imagination and fantasy exemplified by its gothic architecture, and influenced the Pre-Raphaelites 1 .

An important and innovative re-interpreter of the Gothic in this period was Edgar Allan Poe (in the USA). His story The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) explores the 'terrors of the soul' and revisits classic Gothic, themes of aristocratic decay, death and madness.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) established Transylvania and Eastern Europe as the locus classicus 2   of the Gothic.

The 1880s saw a revival of the Gothic. Classic works of this period include Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898).

 

Post-Victorian legacy

Famous writers: Howard Phillip Lovecraft (The case of Charles Dexter Ward...), Robert Bloch (Psycho, 1959), William Faulkner ("Southern Gothic style"), or Stephen King (Salem's Lot 1975)...

Notes: 1)      Pre-Raphaelites: group of English painters, poets and critics 2)      locus classicus: classical location = classical place