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Gothic Fiction

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iWonder - Spine-chillers and suspense: A timeline of Gothic fiction. Best Gothic Books Of All Time (410 books) The Romantic Age: Topic 2: Overview. The Gothic begins with later-eighteenth-century writers' turn to the past; in the context of the Romantic period, the Gothic is, then, a type of imitation medievalism.

The Romantic Age: Topic 2: Overview

When it was launched in the later eighteenth century, The Gothic featured accounts of terrifying experiences in ancient castles — experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and the rest. By extension, it came to designate the macabre, mysterious, fantastic, supernatural, and, again, the terrifying, especially the pleasurably terrifying, in literature more generally. The Gothic. Elements of the Gothic Novel. Robert Harris Version Date: June 15, 2015 The gothic novel was invented almost single-handedly by Horace Walpole, whose The Castle of Otranto (1764) contains essentially all the elements that constitute the genre.

Elements of the Gothic Novel

Walpole's novel was imitated not only in the eighteenth century and not only in the novel form, but it has influenced the novel, the short story, poetry, and even film making up to the present day. Gothic elements include the following: 1. Conventions of the Gothic Genre. There are a number of techniques, devices and conventions common to a great deal of Gothic literature: WEATHER: used in a number of ways and forms, some of these being: Mist - This convention in Gothic Literature is often used to obscure objects (this can be related to the sublime) by reducing visibility or to prelude the insertion of a terrifying person or thing; Storms - These frequently accompany important events.

Conventions of the Gothic Genre

Flashes of lightening accompany revelation; thunder and downpours prefigure the appearance of a character or the beginning of a significant event; Sunlight - represents goodness and pleasure; it also has the power to bestow these upon characters.THE SUBLIME: The definition of this key term has long been a contested term, but the idea of the sublime is essential to an understanding of Gothic poetics and, especially, the attempt to defend or justify the literature of terror.

How to tell you're reading a gothic novel – in pictures. Gothic motifs. What does it mean to say a text is Gothic?

Gothic motifs

Professor John Bowen considers some of the best-known Gothic novels of the late 18th and 19th centuries, exploring the features they have in common, including marginal places, transitional time periods and the use of fear and manipulation. Professor John Bowen discusses key motifs in Gothic novels , including the uncanny, the sublime and the supernatural. Filmed at Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham. Gothic fiction. Gothic literature redirects here.

Gothic fiction

It may also refer to texts written in the extinct Gothic language. Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines fiction, horror and Romanticism. Its origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1763 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled (in its second edition) "A Gothic Story. "