Gothic plotlines typically involve an unsuspecting person (or persons)-usually an innocent, naive, somewhat helpless heroine-who becomes embroiled in complex and oftentimes evil paranormal scheme. continue reading.Ī Brief Introduction to Gothic Literature Credited as the first Gothic novel and considered one of the founding texts of the genre is Horace Walpoles The Castle of. One of the giants of Gothic Literature, Edgar Allan Poe set the standard not only for the genres creepy plot and characters, but also for what it means to be. 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 literature has a long history dating back to the 18th century. 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. a Gothic NovelIn Pictures Edgar Allan Poe. The Gothic novel has a long history, and although it has changed since 1765 when it began with Walpole's Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, it has maintained certain classic Gothic romantic elements, through Shelley's Frankenstein of 1818 and Stoker's infamous Dracula of 1897, until today, with authors like Stephen King. 6 MEDIA: PHOTO GALLERY from The Dream Collector Arthur Tress. Gothic literature is a deliciously terrifying blend of fiction and horror with a little romance thrown in. The introduction to the Palgrave Gothic Handbook: Modern Gothic 1918 to the Present, edited by Clive Bloom, Professor Emeritus, Middlesex University UK, is the most comprehensive short introduction to the modern gothic milieu now available. The author describes how she was feeling angry at her parents for getting a divorce, so she ran away to her grandmother's house when. The author reads a book called 'The Cask of Amontillado' by Edgar Allan Poe. The author goes searching for something to do and finds a book in her grandmother's room. Lloyd-Smith here defines the gothic as a "reactionary form" that "explores chaos and wrongdoing in a movement toward the ultimate restitution of order and convention" (5).Ĭhapter 1, "What is American Gothic," is then followed by two brief chapters consisting of a timeline of the growth and development of the American Gothic and a chapter entitled "How to Read American Gothic." The timeline includes not only the dates of publication for American gothic works, but.Gothic Literature: A Definition and List of Gothic Fiction Elements One night, a storm hit and the power went out. After a brief two-page introduction that foregrounds the importance of repetition to the genre, both in the sense of later authors working within an established generic tradition and in the sense of the return of the repressed, the book begins with a seven-page overview of the American gothic that introduces general aspects of gothic literature, such as its emphasis on the sublime, the distinction between terror and horror (which is poorly explained), and its focus on extreme emotional states, as well as specifically American cultural anxieties that influenced the development of the American gothic including the frontier experience, the legacy of Puritanism, anxieties about radical democracy, and issues of racial difference. Alan Lloyd-Smith, who is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at the University of East Anglia and who is the author of Uncanny American Fiction: Medusa's Face (Macmillan 1989) and co-editor with Victor Sage of Gothick: Origins and Innovations (Editions Costerus-Rodopi 1994), is an established scholar of the American gothic and a good choice to author the text.Īmerican Gothic Fiction more or less follows the series template outlined above. (The other two currently out are on Native American Literatures and Irish Fiction, with forthcoming titles on Fantasy, Horror, Crime Fiction, and Science Fiction.) These relatively short texts (exclusive of annotated bibliography, glossary, and index, American Gothic Fiction clocks in around 160 pages) all more or less follow the same nine-part template: a broad definition of the genre, a timeline of its historical development, critical concerns to bear in mind while reading, detailed readings of several key texts, in-depth analysis of major themes and issues, "signposts" for future study, a summary of significant critical works, a glossary, and an annotated reading list of additional critical sources. $21.95.Īmerican Gothic Fiction: An Introduction is one of the first three entries in Continuum's "Studies in Literary Genre" series. American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction.
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