GOTHIC FICTION

Gothic fiction, or Gothic horror, is a genre of literature that combines fiction, horror, and romance. Melodrama and parody are other long-standing features of the Gothic. It originated in England in the second half of the 18th century and had much success in the 19th as witnessed by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The name Gothic refers to the (pseudo)-medieval buildings in which many of these stories take place – castles, dungeons, decaying ruins, monasteries, and haunted mansions.

THE GOTHIC SETTING

English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.

STOCK CHARACTERS

The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes (based on Lord Byron’s works), persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, demons, dragons, angels, fallen angels, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, and the Devil himself.

CHARACTERISTIC ELEMENTSOF GOTHIC FICTION

A castle, ruined or intact, haunted or not

Ruined, sinister buildings

Dungeons, underground passages, crypts, and catacombs which, in modern houses, become spooky basements or attics

Labyrinths, dark corridors, and winding stairs

Shadows, a beam of moonlight in the blackness, a flickering candle, or the only source of light failing

Extreme landscapes, like rugged mountains, thick forests, or icy wastes, and extreme weather

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS:

Omens and ancestral curses

Magic, supernatural manifestations, or the suggestion of the supernatural

A passion-driven, willful villain-hero or villain

A curious heroine with a tendency to faint and a need to be rescued–frequently

A hero whose true identity is revealed by the end of the novel

Horrifying (or terrifying) events or the threat of such happenings

“Poe is the supreme

short story writer of

all time.”

– Sir Arthur Conan

Doyle.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

“I think Edgar Poe is the most original American genius.” - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“The prince of American Literature.” - Victor Hugo

“Poe’s genius has yet conquer’d a special recognition for itself, and I too have come to fully admit it, and to fully appreciate it and him.” - Walt Whitman

“It’s because I liked Edgar Allen Poe’s stories so much that I began to make suspense films.” - Alfred Hitchcock

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen,

premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the

dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such

literary classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall

of the House of Usher.”

This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a

novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of

essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the

inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the

science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first

great literary critic and theoretician.

Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well

as on his haunting lyric poetry.