30 Facts About Gothic literature

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

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

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

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

Related searches

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

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

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

The corpses, skeletons, and churchyards so commonly associated with early Gothic literature 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.

All of the aspects of pre-Gothic literature occur to some degree in the Gothic, but even taken together, they still fall short of true Gothic.

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

Eighteenth century Gothic literature 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 literature 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 literature novel is Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin, which combines themes of anti-Catholicism with an outcast Byronic hero.

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

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

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

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

Romantic strand of Gothic literature 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.

Related searches

Gothic literature fiction continues to be extensively practised by contemporary authors.

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

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

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