THE GOTHIC NOVEL - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

THE GOTHIC NOVELSlide2

DEFINITION

Gothic novel is a genre or mode of literature and film that combines fiction and horror, death and at times, romance. Slide3

HISTORY

Its origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. It originated in England in the second half of the 18th century and had much success in the 19

th

century. Other important gothic novels are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.Slide4

Why did the gothic novel succeed?

Gothic fiction began as a sophisticated joke. The first gothic story was "The Castle of Otranto", published by

Horacle

Walpole in 1764. Walpole had discovered a fictional territory that hadn't been exploited yet, so in his novels he began to include characteristics like: the supernatural, the discovery of mysterious elements and frightening buildings. People really love this type of novel and so more gothic novels appeared.Slide5

Characteristics of the gothic novel

Gothic novels focus on the mysterious and supernatural. In Frankenstein, Shelley uses rather mysterious circumstances to have Victor Frankenstein create the monster: the cloudy circumstances under which Victor gathers body parts for his experiments and the use of little known modern technologies for unnatural purposes. Shelley employs the supernatural elements of raising the dead and macabre research into unexplored fields of science unknown to most readers. Gothic novels also take place in gloomy settings and far away places that seem mysterious to the reader and function as part of the Gothic novel's setting. Slide6

Gothic novel in 19th Century

Gothic fiction, is a genre

of

literature and film that combines fiction and horror, death, and at times romance. Its origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. It originated in England in the second half of the

18

th

Century

and

was successful

in the

19

th

Century,

as witnessed by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Another well known novel in this genre, dating from the late Victorian era, is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The name Gothic refers to the (pseudo)-medieval buildings, emulating Gothic architecture, in which many of these stories take place. This extreme form of romanticism was very popular in England and Germany. The English Gothic novel also led to new novel types such as the German

Schauerroman

and the French Georgia.