33 Facts About Gothic fiction

Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting.

Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present.

Gothic fiction is distinguished from other forms of scary or supernatural stories, such as fairy tales, by the specific theme of the present being haunted by the past.

The depiction of horrible events in Gothic fiction often serves as a metaphorical expression of psychological or social conflicts.

The form of a Gothic fiction story is usually discontinuous and convoluted, often incorporating tales within tales, changing narrators, and framing devices such as discovered manuscripts or interpolated histories.

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Gothic fiction literature is intimately associated with the Gothic fiction Revival architecture of the same era.

Female Gothic fiction narratives focus on such topics as a persecuted heroine in flight from a villainous father and in search of an absent mother, while male writers tend towards masculine transgression of social taboos.

Components that would eventually combine into Gothic fiction literature had a rich history by the time Walpole presented a fictitious medieval manuscript in The Castle of Otranto in 1764.

The influence of Pope's poem is found throughout 18th-century Gothic fiction literature, including the novels of Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis.

Gothic fiction often uses scenery of decay, death, and morbidity to achieve its effects .

However, Gothic fiction literature was not the origin of this tradition; indeed, it was far older.

The corpses, skeletons, and churchyards so commonly associated with early Gothic fiction works were popularized by the Graveyard poets, and were present in novels such as Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, which contains comical scenes of plague carts and piles of corpses.

Birth of Gothic fiction literature was thought to have been influenced by political upheaval.

Eighteenth century Gothic novels were typically set in a distant past and a distant European country, but without specific dates or historical figures that characterized the later development of historical fiction.

The Vampyre has been accounted by cultural critic Christopher Frayling as one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction ever written and spawned a craze for vampire Gothic fiction and theatre that has not ceased to this day.

Mary Shelley's novel, though clearly influenced by the Gothic tradition, is often considered the first science fiction novel, despite the novel's lack of any scientific explanation for the monster's animation and the focus instead on the moral dilemmas and consequences of such a creation.

Walter Scott, although ushering in the historical novel, and in effect, turning popularity away from Gothic fiction, frequently employs Gothic elements in his novels and poetry.

Late example of a traditional Gothic fiction novel is Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin, which combines themes of anti-Catholicism with an outcast Byronic hero.

Gothic fiction wrote an opera based on the Friedrich de la Motte Fouque's Gothic story Undine, for which de la Motte Fouque himself wrote the libretto.

Gogol's work differs from Western European Gothic fiction, as his cultural influences drew on Ukrainian folklore, Cossack lifestyle and, as he was a religious man, Orthodox Christianity.

The mood and themes of the Gothic fiction novel held a particular fascination for the Victorians, with their obsession with mourning rituals, mementos, and mortality in general.

Irish Catholic Gothic fiction writers included Gerald Griffin, James Clarence Mangan, and John and Michael Banim.

Classic works of this Urban Gothic fiction include Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, George du Maurier's Trilby, Richard Marsh's The Beetle, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, and the stories of Arthur Machen.

In Ireland, Gothic fiction tended to be purveyed by the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy.

Until the 1990s, Russian Gothic fiction was not viewed as a genre or label by Russian critics.

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The way Ulysses uses Gothic tropes such as ghosts and hauntings while removing the literally supernatural elements of 19th century Gothic fiction is indicative of a general form of modernist Gothic writing in the first half of the 20th century.

Romantic strand of Gothic fiction was taken up in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, which is seen by some to have been influenced by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Mass-produced Gothic romances became popular in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with authors such as Phyllis A Whitney, Joan Aiken, Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels, Mary Stewart, Alicen White and Jill Tattersall.

Gothic fiction continues to be extensively practised by contemporary authors.

Novels in the Australian Gothic fiction tradition include Kate Grenville's The Secret River and the works of Kim Scott.

An even smaller genre is Tasmanian Gothic fiction, set exclusively on the island, with prominent examples including Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan and The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson.

Southern Ontario Gothic fiction applies a similar sensibility to a Canadian cultural context.

In Hindi cinema, the Gothic fiction tradition was combined with aspects of Indian culture, particularly reincarnation, for an "Indian Gothic fiction" genre, beginning with Mahal and Madhumati .