Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) is often regarded as the first true Gothic romance. For example, the film industry likes to use metonymy as a quick shorthand, so we often notice that it is raining in funeral scenes.Ī peculiar glossary of the gothic novels for mystery, fear, terror, surprise, haste anger or largeness for creating the atmosphere. Metonymy is a subtype of metaphor, in which something (like rain) is used to stand for something else (like sorrow). Women are threatened by a powerful and tyrannical male. Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable and dramatic events may occur.Ĭharacters may have high, even overwrought emotion resulting in crying and emotional speeches.įemale characters are often in distress and are oppressed in order to gain sympathy of the readers. This was named so because all these novels seem to take place in Gothic-styled architecture which was mainly castles, mansions, and abbeys. Centuries more passed before “gothic” came to describe a certain type of novels.
They began to regard a particular type of architecture, mainly those built during the middle Ages, as “gothic.” It was not because of any connection to the Goths, but because the ‘Uomo Universale’ considered these buildings “barbaric” and definitely not in that Classical style. During the Renaissance, Europeans rediscovered Greco-Roman culture. They reached the height of their utmost power around 5th century A.D., when they sacked Rome and captured Spain, but their history finally subsumed under that of the countries they conquered (“Goths”). They were named so because of the place where they finally settled. Later Goths separated into twongroups, the Visigoths (the West Goths) and Ostrogoths (the East Goths). According to their own myths, as narrated by Jordanes, a Gothic historian from the mid 6th century, the Goths originated in what is now southern Sweden, but their king Berig led them to the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. They fought numerous battles with the Roman Empire for centuries. The Goths were one of the many Germanic tribes. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) are other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole. It is an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole’s novel. The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror. The Gothic novel was a branch of the larger Romantic movement that sought to stimulate strong emotions in the reader – fear and apprehension in this case.’ Such novel takes its name from medieval architecture, as it often hearkens back to the medieval era in spirit and subject matter and often uses Gothic buildings as a setting. Gothicism‘s origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled “A Gothic Story“. It is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothic novel is sometimes referred to as Gothic horror.
Gothic Novel is a “genre of fiction characterized by mystery and supernatural horror, often set in a dark castle or other medieval setting.” Such novel is pseudo-medieval fiction with a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror.
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