Gothic Fiction/ The Horror Novel

Gothic Fiction/ The Horror Novel

 

Gothic fiction flowered in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, notably with the romances of M.G. Lewis and Charles Maturin and Ann Radcliffe.   The word Gothic originally meant medieval, but by the end of the 18^th century, it came to refer to a literature preoccupied with the macabre.  This was a very popular type of fiction  -- particularly with women -- between 1790 and 1820.  Gothic novelists experimented with a new kind of fiction which dealt primarily with emotional and imaginative awareness and the non-rational, darker side of experience.  It was often described as being a type of self-obsessed and claustrophobic type of narrative.  In this respect, Gothic fiction represented the extreme development of the eighteenth-century cult of Sensibility.  Sublimated sexual fantasy and masochism were often close to the surface in repetitive and cliched plots involving persecuted heroines, lascivious villains, and perverted priests as well as ghosts and nightmares.  Other Gothic conventions included the use of the supernatural, the macabre, and the fantastic.

 In the 19^th century, the earlier variant – with its romance-related emphasis on distant picturesque locales and historical settings – turned more toward domestic realism.  These novels started focusing on the horror/gothic next door.  Along with Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte incorporated gothic elements into her fiction.  Jane Austen mocked the gothic in Northanger Abbey. 

 From: http://www.stanford.edu/~steener/su02/english132/Gothic%20Fiction.htm