Gothic novel

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Image:Strawberryhill.jpg The gothic novel was a literary genre that belonged to Romanticism and began in the United Kingdom with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. It depended for its effect on the pleasing terror it induced in the reader, a new extension of literary pleasures that was essentially Romantic. It is the predecessor of modern horror fiction and, above all, has led to the common definition of "gothic" as being connected to the dark and horrific.

Prominent features of gothic novels included terror (psychological as well as physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted buildings, castles, trapdoors, doom, death, decay, madness, hereditary curses, and so on.

Important ideas concerning and influencing the Gothic include: Anti-Catholicism, especially criticism of Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain); romanticism of an ancient Medieval past; melodrama; and parody (including self-parody).

1 Origins of the gothic novel
2 The first gothic novels
3 France and Germany
4 Later developments
5 Post-Victorian legacy
6 Prominent examples
- 6.1 Gothic satire
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

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Origins of the gothic novel

The term "gothic" was originally a disparaging term applied to a style of medieval architecture (Gothic architecture) and art (Gothic art). The opprobrious term "gothick" was embraced by the 18th century proponents of the gothic revival, a forerunner of the Romantic genres. Gothic revival architecture, which became popular in the nineteenth century, was a reaction to the classical architecture that was a hallmark of the Age of Reason.

In a way similar to the gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the term "gothic" became linked with an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrill 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 eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Protestants 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.

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The first gothic novels

The term "gothic" came to be applied to the literary genre precisely because the genre dealt with such emotional extremes and dark themes, and because it found its most natural settings in the buildings of this style - castles, mansions, and monasteries, often remote, crumbling, and ruined. It was a fascination with this architecture and its related art, poetry (see Graveyard Poets), and even landscape gardening that inspired the first wave of gothic novelists. For example, Horace Walpole, whose The Castle of Otranto is often regarded as the first true gothic novel, was obsessed with fake medieval gothic architecture, and built his own house, Strawberry Hill, in that form, sparking off a fashion for gothic revival.

Walpole's novel arose out of this obsession with the medieval. He originally claimed that the book was a real medieval romance he had discovered and republished. Thus was born the gothic novel's association with fake documentation to increase its effect. Indeed, The Castle of Otranto was originally subtitled A Romance -- a literary form held by educated taste to be tawdry and unfit even for children, due to its superstitious elements -- but Walpole revived some of the elements of the medieval romance in a new form. The basic plot created many other gothic staples, including a threatening mystery and an ancestral curse, as well as countless trappings such as hidden passages and oft-fainting heroines.

It was however Ann Radcliffe who created the gothic novel in its now-standard form. Among other elements, Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the gothic villain, which developed into the Byronic hero. Unlike Walpole's, her novels, beginning with The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), were best-sellers, and virtually everyone in English society was reading them. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is undoubtedly one of the most important literary triumphs of this period.

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France and Germany

At about the same time, parallel Romantic literary movements developed in continental Europe: the roman noir ("black novel") in France and the Schauerroman ("shudder novel") in Germany.

The German Schauerroman was often more horrific and violent than the English gothic novel, and may have influenced Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk (1796) in this regard. One notable writer was E.T.A. Hoffman.

Writers of the roman noir include François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil, Baculard d'Arnaud, and Madame de Genlis. Some writings of the Marquis de Sade have also been called "gothic". Sade provided a critique of the genre in his Reflections on the novel (1800), considering The Monk to be superior to the work of Ann Radcliffe.

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Later developments

In the United Kingdom, the gothic novel as a genre largely played itself out by 1840. This was helped by the over-saturation of the genre by cheap "pulp" works—which would later morph into cheap horror fiction in the form of "penny dreadfuls"—as well as a decline in the genre's respectability since the turn of the century, caused by the publication of works such as Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk (1796), a shocking (particularly at the time) tale of sex, violence and debauchery that almost bordered on the pornographic.

However, the gothic novel had a lasting effect on the development of literary form in the Victorian period. It led to the Victorian craze for short ghost stories, as well as the short, shocking, macabre tale as mastered by the American author Edgar Allan Poe. It also was a heavy influence on Charles Dickens, who read gothic novels as a teenager and incorporated their gloomy atmosphere and melodrama into his own works, shifting them to a more modern period. The mood and themes of the gothic novel held a particular fascination for the Victorians, with their morbid obsession with mourning rituals, Mementos, and mortality in general.

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Post-Victorian legacy

By the 1880s, it was time for a revival of the gothic novel as a semi-respectable literary form. This was the period of the gothic works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Machen, and Oscar Wilde, and the most famous gothic villain ever appeared in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Other notable writers included Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, and H.P.Lovecraft. Lovecraft's protégé, Robert Bloch, penned the gothic horror classic, Psycho, which drew on the classic interests of the genre. From these, the gothic genre per se gave way to modern horror fiction, although many literary critics use the term to cover the entire genre, and many modern writers of horror (or indeed other types of fiction) exhibit considerable gothic sensibilities -- examples include the works of Anne Rice, as well as some of the less sensationalist works of Stephen King.

The genre also influenced American writing to create the genre of Southern Gothic literature, which combines some Gothic sensibilities (such as the Grotesque) with the setting and style of the Southern United States. Examples include William Faulkner, Harper Lee, and Flannery O'Connor. Also see Southern Ontario Gothic.

The themes of the gothic novel have had innumerable children. It led to the modern horror film, one of the most popular of all genres seen in films. While few classical composers drew on gothic works, twentieth century popular music drew on it strongly, eventually resulting in gothic rock and the goth subculture surrounding it. Themes from gothic writers such as H.P. Lovecraft were also used amongst heavy metal bands, especially in black metal, death metal and gothic metal. More recently, the gothic tradition has been expanded to new media forms on the internet.

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