1. Introduction to Gothic Literature
Studies in Literature, 2015

2. Where does the word “gothic” come from? That’s easy: history.

3. Gothic just means: "of the Goths," Germanic people who lived in Eastern Europe c.100 C.E., "pertaining to the Goths or their language"
There were a number of Germanic tribes during the height of the Roman Empire to about 800 CE (Visigoths, Ostrogoth, etc.)
They migrated all over Europe (Italy, Spain, Germany, France) essentially sacking and taking over.
The term is taken in a used in sense of "savage despoiler" (1660s) in reference to their fifth-century sacking of Roman cities
It evolved to mean anything Medieval German, then eventually anything dark and Medieval.

4. Connection to the Gothic Novel
Centuries passed before the word "gothic" meant anything else again. During the Renaissance, Europeans rediscovered Greco-Roman culture and began to regard a particular type of architecture, mainly those built during the Middle Ages, as "gothic" -- not because of any connection to the Goths, but because the 'Uomo Universale' considered these buildings barbaric and definitely not in that Classical style they so admired. Centuries more passed before "gothic" came to describe a certain type of novels, so named because all these novels seem to take place in Gothic-styled architecture -- mainly castles, mansions, and, of course, abbeys.

5. It also has to do with a type of architecture that was immensely popular at the time of the genre’s birth: Gothic Revivalist

8. How the word is used today:
It represents a contemporary subculture that started in the 1980s – basically post punk.
Like most subcultures, it has its own set of norms, fashions, musical tastes, and intertextual links. While its heyday was the 1980s to 90s, the subculture persists today.
Fashion is specifically dark, and has elements of Elizabethan or more specifically Victorian elements. Behaviour is often mysterious and standoffish.
There is typically an affection for art, music, and folklore that examines the same themes and topics as what is defined as Gothic literature. Gender role are also usually more fluid than mainstream society.

9. Gothic fiction is a genre of literature that essentially combines horror and romance. Gothic fiction plays on the interesting paradox of a pleasurable sort of terror – the idea that the frightening could be arousing. Prominent tropes of Gothic fiction include terror (psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghost, haunted houses, haunted landscapes, castles, ruins, graveyards, abbeys, monasteries, dungeons, exotic foreign (often Eastern European) locations, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, hereditary curses, and magic.

10. Gothic (goth-IK): 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, sometimes a dark and stormy castle as shown in Mary Wollstoncraft Shelly’s Frankenstein, or Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula. Other times, this story of darkness may occur in a more everyday setting. 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 so 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 open may people’s eyes to the possible uses of the supernatural in literature

11. Gothicism is part of the Romantic Movement that started in the late eighteenth century and lasted to roughly three decades into the nineteenth century. The Romantic Movement is characterised by innovation (instead of traditionalism), spontaneity (according to Wordsworth good poetry is a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”), (Neoclassic and Romantic freedom of thought and expression (especially the thoughts and feelings of the poet himself), an idealisation of nature (Romantic poets were also referred to as “nature poets”) and the belief of living in an age of “new beginnings and high possibilities”

12. The origins of Gothic Fiction
Funnily enough, Gothic Fiction started as a joke, or a bit of a literary prank. The first time it was ever used was in Horace Walpole first applied the word ‘Gothic’ to a novel in the subtitle – ‘A Gothic Story’ – of The Castle of Otranto. When he used the word it meant something like ‘barbarous’, as well as ‘deriving from the Middle Ages’.

13. Walpole pretended that the story itself was an antique relic, providing a preface in which a translator claims to have discovered the tale, published in Italian in 1529, ‘in the library of an ancient catholic family in the north of England’. The story itself, ‘founded on truth’, was written three or four centuries earlier still (Preface). Some readers were duly deceived by this fiction and aggrieved when it was revealed to be a modern ‘fake’.
The novel tells a supernatural tale in which Manfred, the gloomy Prince of Otranto, develops an irresistible passion for the beautiful young woman who was to have married his son and heir. It opens with this son being crushed to death by the huge helmet from a statue of a previous Prince of Otranto, and throughout the novel the very fabric of the castle comes to supernatural had discovered a fictional territory that has been exploited ever since. Gothic involves the supernatural (or the promise of the supernatural), it often involves the discovery of mysterious elements of antiquity, and it usually takes its protagonists into strange or frightening old buildings.

14. 18th Century Title Page:

15. There are also a number of “stock characters” in Gothic fiction:
 tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, demons, magicians, vampires, ghosts, witches, monsters, dragons, angels, ghosts, skeletons, the Wandering Jew, and even the devil himself.

16. The Byronic Hero
Named after George Gordon, Lord Byron – this type of hero isn’t your typical Superman.
Byronic heroes are arrogant, cynical, self-destructive, passionate, rebellious, mysterious, jaded, intelligent, charming, angry, educated, sexual, and often involved in an intense struggle with integrity
They are often an outcast or an outlaw

17. Here is a great example of one:

19. The main protagonist is usually a solitary character who has an egocentric nature. (males and females)
Even though the genre is a phase in the Romantic movement, it is regarded as the forerunner of the modern mystery or science fiction novel – Frankenstein is actually considered the FIRST sci-fi novel!!!

20. The MAJOR classical gothic novels:
Published in 1796, follows a young girl who is chased, raped, killed, etc. by a tyrant in a old castle
Published in 1820, the story of a man who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for longer life.
Published in 1764, the story
follows a young woman in a
crumbling castle full of
(possibly) supernatural happenings

21. Romantic Period and Victorian Gothic

22. Southern Gothic and Contemporary Gothic Fiction

23. Common Thematics in the Gothic
Madness – fantasy vs. reality
The socio-economic pressures of succession
Dangerous knowledge/secrets getting out
Appearance vs. reality – family/country/death
Reason vs. Passion/Imagination
Rational vs. Irrational
The power of the past
**these are often allegorically represent other social concerns, such as immigration, race, class, gender, and industrialization.

24. Standard Literary Elements: Symbols, Motifs, and Imagery
blood (literal and symbolic of lineages) light and dark imagery death and decay portraits, paintings, pictures, galleries overwrought emotion – melodrama – in action and in language pathetic fallacy traps, pursuit supernatural or unexplained events omens or visions of the future prophecies, quests, curses women controlled/oppressed by tyrannical males haste, surprise, anger, fear, terror, sorrow the past returning (either spirits raising from the dead, ancient customs persisting, or memories lingering metonymy of gloom and horror (wolves howling, ruins of buildings, chains rattling, etc.)

25. Contemporary Gothic:
The Gothic genre has returned in popularity recently: TV shows like True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, Supernatural, Bitten, Teen Wolf, etc…lots of recent films (adaptations of older stories like Dracula and newer one-offs like The Last Exorcism, or The Woman In Black, and as ever, novels like The Shadow of the Wind, Let the Right One In, Perfume, or The Night Circus. Where in any of these do you see the tropes of the genre?