Definition of gothic literature12/30/2023 ![]() ![]() Themes such as these are common both to the generically narrower form of the ghost story, and to the wider concept of the Gothic. The source of terror may intrude into the familiar in the form of the past and the dead or the untamed world of nature, or from the human mind, as dreams do (Banquo's 'cursed thoughts which nature gives way to in repose'), or it may come from the rational world itself in the form of a scientific aberration it may even come from such characteristically human ambitions and activities as war, oppression, persecution, which the twentieth century has made peculiarly its own. "Ghost stories have multiple meanings, but one constant element is the challenge they offer to the rational order and the observed laws of nature, though they may do so in a variety of ways, reintroducing what is perceived as fearful, alien, excluded or dangerously marginal. Through different times the focus of ghost stories changed as for example during the new technological inventions during the 20th century possesed machinery was a new field of ghost stories. Examples for ghost stories are "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe or "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King. Ghost stories are defined as tales in which the spirits of the dead encounter the living. Necrophiliac desire for the dead woman (Heathcliff's digging of Catherine's grave) also points to other kinds of transgressions, such as incest. Elizabeth Bronfen's book Over her Dead Body suggests that Gothic writing itself may be an act of killing off the female as it transmits the animate body into inanimate text. Poe said that the death of a beautiful woman is "the most poetical topic in the world". There is also a Gothic obsession with the bodies of dead women. Reading about death serves as a reminder of one's mortality. The corporeality of the body is emphasized with gory descriptions of blood and grave worms. We don't really get sentimental scenes like the death of little William in East Lynne rather, the more gruesome, inexplicable aspects of death are explored. The Gothic is interested in what has been glossed over. It is what is unknown, and poses a threat to the Victorian mind which desires order. ![]() Likewise, the subject of death itself has often been ignored or repressed. These kinds of spectres can also be seen as manifestations of the return of the repressed. There is also the trope of the dead who return, as in Poe's Ligeia. The vampire hunters in Dracula have to drive a stake into them, to make sure they are really dead. The vampires who are undead occupy a liminal space they are at once both alive and dead. This thwarts the human wish for certainty. In Gothic literature, death is horrific because it is often not quite the end. If Gothic literature reflects a wish to overcome one's mortality, there is also a fear of those who somehow manage to transcend it, as in the case of vampires and Frankenstein's monster. Death in Gothic literature is associated with the supernatural. Frankenstein), all of which contribute to an atmosphere of horror. All rights reserved.Gothic literature is obsessed with death, presenting constant portents of death, unnatural deaths, and series of deaths (e.g. Copyright © 2022, Columbia University Press. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Popular practitioners of this genre are Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Catherine Cookson, and Dorothy Eden. Seemingly modeled on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, these novels usually concern spirited young women, either governesses or new brides, who go to live in large gloomy mansions populated by peculiar servants and precocious children and presided over by darkly handsome men with mysterious pasts. During the 1960s so-called Gothic novels became enormously popular in England and the United States. The influence of the genre can be found in some works of Coleridge, Le Fanu, Poe, and the Brontës. Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey satirizes Gothic romances. Maturin, and the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was the forerunner of the type, which included the works of Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Charles R. Gothic romances were mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they were usually set against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles. Gothic romance, type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th cent.
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