Summary Of Gothic Literature By Mary Ellen Snodgrass
“What is the Gothic? Few literary genres have attracted so much critical appetite and opprobrium simultaneously.” (Wright.p.1) is the first line in the Gothic Fiction, Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism by Angela Wright, published in 2007, which opens a lot of questions and doubts about this movement. The literary movement focused on terror, death, decay, chaos, ruin, and passion over rationality and reason grew in response to the sociological, historical, psychological and political context. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the world witnessed the rise of gothic literature, a new movement, also known as an anti-transcendentalist movement.
Gothic literature can make you feel like you are in the story. It provides a dubious feeling and is some of the most descriptive writing out there. Pretty much all gothic literature can be connected through the gothic elements within the story. In the short stories, “Prey”, by Richard Matheson, “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, and “The Raven”, by Edgar Allen Poe, gothic elements such as grotesqueness and supernatural events connect together.
Introduction Gothic fiction has fascinated and unnerved readers for more than two centuries. It features distant landscapes, sensual fantasies, and uncanny incidents. Gothic literature evoked strong emotional responses within readers, as well as tapped into their deepest fears and anxieties. Relating to the statement, Gothic literature presents new ideas about the self, society, and the connection between them. It concerns itself with the treatment of marginalised individuals within society and presents new concepts of understanding these individuals.
Snodgrass’s “Dissipation in Gothic Literature” explains the meaning behind the common themes in gothic literature. Furthermore, she evaluates the role dissipation plays amongst the characters and the genre. Snodgrass discusses the shifty essence of the indiscretions in “The Veldt.” She examines how the desire for fantasy demolishes the personality of characters in gothic literature. Additionally, Snodgrass notes the results the dissipated behavior which “The Veldt” portrays.
I want you to think about those people that you like, that are in your inner circle, and then about the people on the outside of your circle. Why are they outside? Is it, just possibly, because they are different than you? Or because you’ve heard something about them? Or possibly just looking at them, you feel like there is something wrong about them?
Sophia Barnes Mr. Arthurs Honors English 10 13 February 2023 Comparing and Contrasting Gothic Elements Essay The world first experienced Gothic literature during the late eighteenth century. Built out of Romantic literature, Gothic literature embraced the imaginary and explored the dark side of human nature. One of the most famous Gothic writers, Edgar Allan Poe, produced many famous poems and short stories filled with Gothic elements. One of the most common Gothic elements, the use of supernatural events, appears in many of Poe’s stories, such as “The Black Cat”, “The Raven”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
Edgar Allan Poe’s frightening gothic style poetry and short novels about fear, love, death and horror are prominent to Gothic Literature and explore madness through a nerve-recking angle. The incredible, malformed author, poet, editor and novelist is recognized for his famous classical pieces such as “The Raven”, “Berenice” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, pieces of work that mystically yet magnificently awakens readers with a gloomy spirit. Awakening the subject of madness through written work was viewed as insane during Poe’s times. Yet Poe published some of the worlds most magnificently frightening pieces of literature throughout history. In the following essay I will examine and cautiously analyze
The gothic period in American history was full of dark themes that reflected the response that romanticism had on individualist literature. Instead of viewing individuals with hope, gothic’s looked at individuals with the potential of evil. This was the source of the macabre styles like fear, greed, and betrayal that came to define the gothic era. One of the defining authors of the era was Edgar Allan Poe who wrote the story Masque of the Red Death with many of the themes of the gothic era in mind. In particular, the story is primarily centered around death and our inability to escape it.
Female monstrosity is manifested in different dimensions. Mladan Dolar, in this respect, argues that: “The monster can stand for anything our culture has to repress; the proletariat, sexuality, other cultures, alternative ways of living, heterogeneity, the Other.” (qtd. in Walser, 2). In other words, monsters represent a site of threat for the Western notions of normalcy.
Accordingly, canonical gothic narratives such as Shelly’s Frankenstein re-appear in new (re)visions, overtly displaying the Gothic’s diffusion over “a multiplicity of different genres and media,” to use Botting’s own words (Gothic 13). Then, Botting goes further to explain that with the rise of postmodern theories it seems increasingly difficult to speak of ‘the Gothic’ with any assurance,” instead we should speak about ‘Gothics’ (1). As a “hybrid form, incorporating and transforming other literary forms as well as developing and changing its own conventions in relation to newer modes of writing,” postmodern gothic crosses generic boundaries, opening up a fertile intertexual dialogue with other literary forms such as science-fiction. It is acutely this cross-fertilisation or what I will call “dialogic symbiosis” between the gothic and science-fiction that contributes to a generic hybridism which gives rise to a heterogeneous subgenre: the ‘Feminist Gothic Science-fiction’ that challenges the fixed of inter-disciplinary boundaries. Jackson tries to fill the gaps of Todorov’s theory of the fantastic.
The Gothic genre arose in the late 18th and 19th centuries during a time of significant discovery and exploration, especially in the sciences (Marinaro). Through storytelling, people were able to explore new ideas and question how much we knew. Typical horror elements including ghosts, death, and madness alludes to the fear of the unknown in humans (Marinaro). The fear of the unknown is a common Gothic theme that is used to create fear and anxiety. “What was it,” by Fitz-James O’Brien is a short gothic horror story, and also a great contribution to the evolution of science fiction (Hartwell, p.864).
Why does gothic horror even matter in literature? Gothic horror can create numerous ideas found within a novel more interesting or suspenseful about what will happen next. These stories use different characteristics to create a gothic atmosphere in the story. During the Victorian era, the idea of gothic literature grew in popularity. It is influenced by countless ideas, including religious themes around this time period, and usually reflects on the characteristics of the people living in the Victorian era.
An aspect of the Romantic period was an interest in the bizarre, supernatural, and gothic. In this era it was common for the passages to makes the reader unsteady with the atmosphere given by the setting. The setting for Sir Bertrand and Castle of Otranto both take place in buildings that are huge and make the character feel small in comparison. This has had an influence to our modern time literature and television shows.
Its fictional world gives form to amorphous fears and impulses common to all mankind, using an amalgam of materials, some torn from the author’s own subconscious mind and some stuff of myth, folklore, fairy tale, and romance. It conjures up beings - mad monks, vampires, and demons ... Gothic fiction gives shape to concepts of the place of evil in the human mind
Gothic Literature Gothic writing was a development that concentrated on demolish, rot, demise, dread, and disarray, and special mindlessness and energy over discernment and reason, developed in light of the chronicled,
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