What made American Gothic Fiction distinctive from European authors? Three words: Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's fascinating book with chapters on the dawn of the horror tale, Poe, and weird traditions in America and the British Isles: Supernatural Horror in Literature. Though some were convinced reviews from Cambridge were that the book "made some of them cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o' nights." Several authors helped legitimize the genre by imposing realism to give credibility to their fantastic supernatural elements (authors such as Ann Radcliffe and Clara Reeve, whom we do no feature here). His female lesbian dracula novel, Carmilla (1872), inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).īecause of its superstitious elements, combining history with fiction, intellectuals of the Enlightenment were offended by Gothic literature's "fake" facts. In the nineteenth century, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu became a leading author of horror and ghost stories. The first recognized Gothic novel was Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). Gothic literature took that further, involving horror, terror, death, omens, the supernatural, and heroines in distress. Dark Romanticism draws from darker elements of the human psyche, the evil side of spiritual truth. Originating in England and Germany in the later part of the 18th century, it grew out of Romanticism, a strong reaction against the Transcendental Movement.
The word "gothic" has had a resurgence of popularity with selective young people: "goth" has come to represent a culture of dark music, dress, and attitude intent to be shocking or disturbing to others. Romantic and Victorian authors who embraced this genre included Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and with a particular focus on psychological terror, the entire canon of Edgar Allan Poe.
The etymology of the word "Gothic" is from the French gothique and in Latin, Gothi, which means "not classical." A reference to the ancient Germanic people's language, it became a medieval style of art and architecture that emerged in Northern Europe in the 1640s, and by the 19th century became a literary style that used medieval settings to suggest mystery and horror. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett.The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane.The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne.