Gothic | Literary Term | English Literature | Major English | Plus Two Level
Gothic
is a literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the
beginning of the 19th. This style usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing
with horror, despair, the grotesque and other dark subjects. Gothic literature
was named for the apparent influence of the dark gothic architecture of the
period on the genre. Also, many of these Gothic tales took places in such
gothic surroundings. Other times, this story of darkness may occur in a more
everyday setting, such as the quaint house where the man goes mad from the
beating of his guilt as in Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. In essence,
these stories were romances, largely due to their love of the imaginary over
the logical, and were told from many different points of view. This literature gave birth to many other forms,
such as suspense, ghost stories, horror, mystery, and also Poe's detective
stories. Gothic literature wasn't as different from other genres in form as it
was in content and its focus on the weird aspects of life. This movement began
to slowly may open people's eyes to the possible uses of the supernatural in
literature.
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