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The term Gothic is also used to designate narrative poems or poetry of which the principal elements are violence, horror and supernatural. Latin American writers who used Gothic element in their fiction include Henry James, William Faulkner and Flannery O Connor. The genre was one phase of the literary movement of romanticism in English literature and was also the forerunner of modern mystery novel.
Gothic literature elements professional#
This was the era of Gothic revival in architecture brought about by a renewed and romantic interest in the mediaeval.Ĭharles Brockden Brown, the first American professional novelist the best known for his Gothic Romances. Strawberry Hill Gothic become a common term for any example of romantic Gothicized architecture of the period. He made his about into a little Gothic Castle and established a private pros. Much better known then this is Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto (1764), which he wrote in his house at Strawberry Hill near London. One of the earliest examples of Tobias Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) very probably the first novel a form then newly developed to propose terror and cruelty as it main theme.
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Cambridge University Press.The principal writers of the English Gothic Romance were Horace Walpole author of The Castle of Otranto (1764) Clare Reeve who wrote the Campion of Virtue (1777) Ann Redcliffe author of The Mysterious of Udolpho (1794) Mathew George Louis author of The Monk (1796) Charles Robert Mathew who wrote The Fatal Revenge (1807) and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who wrote Frankenstein (1818). The Cambridge companion to Gothic fiction. On the other hand, Gothic Horror confronted the “principal characters with the gross violence or physical or psychological dissolution, explicitly shutting the assumed norms of everyday life with wildly shocking, and even revolting, consequences” (Hogle 3).Ĭaspar David Friedrich, Monastery Graveyard in the Snow, public domain The stories centered on opposing conditions, such as life/death, natural/supernatural, ancient/modern, realistic/artificial, and unconscious/conscious (Hogle 9).Ĭombined, these elements created Gothic Terror that held “characters and readers mostly in anxious suspense about threats to life, safety and sanity kept largely out of sight or in shadows or suggestions from a hidden past” (Hogle 3). Within this setting was something that “haunts the characters - psychologically, physically, or otherwise” through “ghosts, specters, or monsters” (Hogle 2).
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Both Walpole and Radcliffe relied on description to establish creepy settings in antiquated places - castles, crypts, graveyards, aging cities, urban underworlds, decaying factories, laboratories, and public buildings. The elements of the Gothic novel were thus born. Originally she followed the pattern established by Walpole, but Radcliff soon added a component of psychological terror to her stories. Her most famous, The Mysteries of Udolpho, follows Walpole’s model of a gloomy castle in Italy with a villainous character her novel added a menacing threat to the virginal heroine. Ann Radcliffe, also known as the Queen of Gothic, published numerous novels in the genre. Walpole’s achievements bred imitators and successors. In its second publication run, Walpole added the subheading “A Gothic Story.” In his story, the castle has the supernatural ability to come to life to battle the main character. A nightmare while sleeping in his home inspired his novel which is set in an Italian Gothic castle. Additions of Gothic architectural elements turned his miniature castle into a medieval one. At the time, Gothic was considered a derogatory term to describe “barbarians.” Walpole’s love of medieval Gothic began with the renovations of his home at Strawberry Hill. Eventually, those oral traditions of terror and fright worked their way into literature.įirst published on Christmas Day 1764, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto is credited as the first Gothic novel. Beginning with epic tales of floods, monsters, and giants, the supernatural has been passed down from one generation to the next. The idea of the supernatural is as old as storytelling itself.