Elements Of Romanticism In Frankenstein

George Saintsbury explained Supernatural as “...Of the terror and mystery novel (the ‘novel of suspense’, as some call it, adopting from Scott a label doubtfully intended as such) the chief writers – almost the only ones now known, except to special students – were Mrs. Radcliff and ‘Monk’ Lewis. But in the eighteenth century it enjoyed an enormous popularity, secretly registered and irremediably ridiculed in Miss Austen’s Northanger Abbey. In Lewis’s hands (as it had done in those of the Germans) it admitted real diablerie and permitted great license of situation and action; in Mrs. Radcliffe’s and in most, through not quite at all, of her minor followers, it was strictly ‘proper’, and employed a curious, ingenious, and at the time highly

Gothic novels are also considered to contain the essence of romanticism and similar atmospheric substances, which were also flourishing at the time of its origin. To be mentioned, that several romanticist author, including P.B Shelley is reknown for penning Gothic novels. The gothic fiction gained immense popularity in the Victorian era, through the everlasting works of Edgar Alan Poe, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Gothic fiction’s origin also lies with the Gothic architecture, which follows the patterns of pseudo-medieval buildings, and also which are recurring backdrop of Gothic fiction. Gothich novels also produced several more subgenre, such as German Schauerroman and the French

Though the term Schauerroman is considered as the German Gothich fiction, however it can be evaluated as partially true, as there are some original and unique traits of Schauerroman, which differs it from a conventional English Gothic fiction. Some of the fundamental differing traits of Schauerroman are the existence of secret societies, practices of dark arts and necromancy, and a much gloomy and pessimistic plot. Some successfully early German gothic works are, Karl Grosse 's Horrid Mysteries (1791–1794), Christian Heinrich Spiess’ Das Petermännchen (1793), Der alte Überall and Nirgends (1792), Die Löwenritter (1794), Hans Heiling, vierter und letzter Regent der Erd- Luft- Feuer- und Wasser-Geister (1798), Friedrich von Schiller 's The Ghost-Seer (1786–1789), Heinrich von Kleist 's Das Bettelweib von Locarno (1797), Ludwig Tieck 's Der blonde Eckbert (1797) and Der Runenberg (1804), Christian August Vulpius 's Rinaldo Rinaldini, the Robber Captain (1797). While some of the prominent German female gothic writers’ works were, Sophie Albrecht 's Das höfliche Gespenst (1797), Graumännchen oder die Burg Rabenbühl: eine Geistergeschichte