Most Read This Week In Gothic

Gothic fiction is a genre of literature that combines elements of both the uncanny and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. Gothic fiction is considered to be the parent genre for both Horror and Mystery, among other genres.

The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initi Gothic fiction is a genre of literature that combines elements of both the uncanny and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. Gothic fiction is considered to be the parent genre for both Horror and Mystery, among other genres.

The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.

Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere. The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations — thus the urge to add fake ruins as eye catchers in English landscape parks. 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. In literature such anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).

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.

The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.

See also Gothic Romance, Gothic Horror (can exclude much of the romantic elements found in typical Gothic Fiction or Gothic Romance), Southern Gothic (generally consider a Gothic type of horror), Southern Horror, and Gothic Mystery, ...more

Most Read This Week Tagged "Gothic"

Empire of the Damned (Empire of the Vampire, #2)

In the Veins of the Drowning (The Siren Mage, #1)

The Washwoman at the River's End (The Curse of the Fates #1)

In the Wake of the Ruined (The Siren Mage, #2)

Empire of the Dawn (Empire of the Vampire, #3)

The Sanatorium (Detective Elin Warner, #1)

Wormwood Abbey (The Secrets of Ormdale, #1)

The Dark in Her Veins (Divine Villains, 1)

Ruinous Ends (The Souls of Blackwood Academy, #2)

The Exorcism of Faeries (Morbid Realities, #1)

Long Live the Pumpkin Queen (Pumpkin Queen, #1)

The Thief and the Traitor Bride (The Hand and the Heart #2)

Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror

Eternal Ruin (Immortal Dark Trilogy, #2)

Ladies in Hating (Belvoir's Library, #3)

Exhumed: Unearthing the History of the American Vampire

Preaching to the Choir (Terrible Worlds: Transformations)

The Book of Blood and Roses (The Callisto Chronicles #1)

Related Genres

Fiction
Gothic Horror
Southern Gothic
Gothic Romance

Gothic Revival
Ficțion
Fiçtion

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Quotes Tagged “Gothic”

“ Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. ...more ”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

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