Gothic literature definition free#

The ruined castle is also a figure for a fractured psyche. One of the concerns that sets Gothic stories apart from other 'weird tales' is that they lend themselves very easily to readings as psychological allegories.

For example, Paranormal Activity is very much in the camp of terror whilst Saw is horror.Īs an undergrad I wrote a bit about Gothic fiction as a genre (or, Todorov-style, as a 'mode'). Horror is where fear is produced by something being smacked in reader's face. Terror is where nothing really happens and the reader is scared merely by the implication of something bad happening.

Gothic fiction became very popular as more and more people wanted the type of sensationalism the genre could offer (see Lewis's The Monk as a good example)Īt its height Gothic literature began to employ ever more sensationailst tropes: insantity, incest, beastiality, murder, torture, werewolves, devils, SatanismĪ couple of things that Cuddon didn't include:Īside from being sensationalist, Gothic literature also played an important role in the Romantic rejection of Enlightenment thinkingĪnne Radcliffe made a distinction between purely sensationalist literature and the more serious Gothic literature she saw herself as writing: terror verus horror. Some important features of most Gothic fiction: supernatural, wild landscapes, ruined abbeys, dungeons, secret passageways, doom and gloom, heroes 'Most Gothic novels are tales of mystery and horror, intended to chill the spine and curdle the blood' (p 356) One of the best known examples is Walpole's The Caste of Otranto (1764) One of the earliest examples is Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom from 1753 So, I have Cuddon's definition of the Gothic in front of me (page 355-361) so I'll bullet point the salient ideas and I hope that helps:Ī type of romance popular from the 1760s until 1820s JA Cuddon's Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary TheoryĬhris Baldick's Dictionary of Literary Terms For a fuller account, consult Fred Botting, Gothic (1996).For things like this a literary dictionary is invaluable. See also fantastic, horror story, preromanticism. A popular modern variety of women's romance dealing with endangered heroines in the manner of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938) is also referred to as Gothic. In an extended sense, many novels that do not have a medievalized setting, but which share a comparably sinister, grotesque, or claustrophobic atmosphere, have been classed as Gothic: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is a well-known example and there are several important American tales and novels with strong Gothic elements in this sense, from Poe to Faulkner and beyond. The fashion for such works, ridiculed by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey (1818), gave way to a vogue for historical novels, but it contributed to the new emotional climate of Romanticism.

Gothic literature definition free#

Lewis in The Monk (1796), made free use of ghosts and demons along with scenes of cruelty and horror. She was careful to explain away the apparently supernatural occurrences in her stories, but other writers, like M. Following the appearance of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), the Gothic novel flourished in Britain from the 1790s to the 1820s, dominated by Ann Radcliffe, whose Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) had many imitators. A story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or monastery (hence ‘Gothic’, a term applied to medieval architecture and thus associated in the 18th century with superstition).