28 Facts About Gothic horror

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

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

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

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

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Female Gothic horror 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 horror 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 horror literature, including the novels of Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis.

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

The corpses, skeletons, and churchyards so commonly associated with early Gothic horror 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 horror literature was thought to have been influenced by political upheaval.

Eighteenth century Gothic horror 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.

Mary Shelley's novel, though clearly influenced by the Gothic horror 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.

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

Gothic horror 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 horror 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 horror novel held a particular fascination for the Victorians, with their obsession with mourning rituals, mementos, and mortality in general.

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

Classic works of this Urban Gothic horror 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 horror fiction tended to be purveyed by the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy.

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

Romantic strand of Gothic horror 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 horror fiction continues to be extensively practised by contemporary authors.

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

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An even smaller genre is Tasmanian Gothic horror, 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 horror applies a similar sensibility to a Canadian cultural context.

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