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Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror (primarily in the 20th century), is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name refers to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels.
May 20, 2024 · The term Gothic novel refers to European Romantic pseudomedieval fiction having a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror. Its heyday was the 1790s, but it underwent frequent revivals in subsequent centuries. The first Gothic novel in English was Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1765).
Jan 23, 2020 · In the most general terms, Gothic literature can be defined as writing that employs dark and picturesque scenery, startling and melodramatic narrative devices, and an overall atmosphere of exoticism, mystery, fear, and dread.
Nov 18, 2023 · What is Gothic literature? Gothic is a genre with a rich history that still exists today through the works of authors like Stephen King. Learn more about its characteristics.
Jun 4, 2020 · What is Gothic literature? Emerging in Europe in the 18th century, Gothic literature grew out of the Romantic literary movement. It’s a genre that places strong emphasis on intense emotion, pairing terror with pleasure, death with romance. The Gothic is characterized by its darkly picturesque scenery and its eerie stories of the macabre.
Sep 15, 2019 · Here's an overview of Gothic literature with an explanation of the stylistic elements and some examples of different works.
Nov 22, 2022 · Originating in eighteenth-century Europe, Gothic fiction explores paranormal and existential themes amid eerie backgrounds.
The Gothic, a literary movement that focused on ruin, decay, death, terror, and chaos, and privileged irrationality and passion over rationality and reason, grew in response to the historical, sociological, psychological, and political contexts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The Gothic literary genre flourished in Britain between 1765 and 1838, emerging as a dark strain of eighteenth-century Romanticism. Gothic plots featured supernatural occurrences, eerie atmospheres, and decrepit architectural spaces that represented the turmoil of their tortured protagonists.
The earliest Gothic narratives established a formula that remained largely unchanged both in England and America throughout what American Gothic scholar Donald A. Ringe refers to as the genre’s “major phase,” which roughly coincided with Miles’ “effulgence” of Gothic in England (176).
