The Fall Of The House Of Usher And The Horla

Instead of conforming to this perception, people were only led to believe the word to mean “dark and ominous”. Gothic architecture, with the foreboding atmosphere posed around it, correlates with the Gothic novel because it has been a prevalent backdrop to gothic novels in the 19th century, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. These Gothic horror stories were some of the first examples of the horror genre, and are therefore vital for the understanding this field. In its historical context, the gothic horror genre is believed to have emerged as a response to a time of rational thought, the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. This intellectual movement a... ... middle of paper ... ...tablished in the modern horror genre, thus it is practical to observe the archetypes of the Gothic novel as well.

Gothic novels have many different characteristics: they evoke terror both physical and psychological, they have character that keep themselves isolated in time or space from contemporary l... ... middle of paper ... ... Shelley’s Frankenstein truly displays the true essence of what a Gothic novel should represent through the many different characteristics of a Gothic novel. Mary Shelley takes these few basic characteristic and transforms them into a true representation of a Gothic novel. The transformations of these basic Gothic characteristics are what allowed Mary Shelley to create her outstanding and prominent Gothic novel, Frankenstein. Works Cited “Gothic Novels.” The World Book Encyclopedia. Ed.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” exhibits an accurate representation of the Gothic genre. Edgar Allan Poe’s work presents itself as mystifying because of the way he is able to confuse and muddy up the concepts to his readers. Poe incorporates the disappearance and reappearance action of the characters throughout the short story as well as an eerie feeling to represent the Gothic genre. Poe also uses the literary device, Gothic double. However, critics of Poe’s work have considered that some of his short stories are a parody of the Gothic genre.

Gothicism is a sub- genre for many Romantic writers. This genre includes Gothic conventions such as macabre emotions of terror, fear, paranoia, mystery, ancient prophecy, omens and the supernatural(Shodganda, 2014, p. 39). Gothic literature constitutes of horror and romance as a primary theme. The nature of the French Revolution in 1789 encouraged many writers to explore the morbid aspects of Gothic literature. Furthermore, the revolution had a significant impact on Romantic writers because they were concerned with the turbulent effects of the events and its aftermath.

Powerful emotions are often an element of gothic literature as it was a genre that took Romanticism to excessive extents. While Austen used this gothic element to satirize the gothic novel, Shelley used it to display a deeper point about the evils of ambition. Both authors exhibited characters severe emotions to show the importance of rationality instead of extremes, but ultimately had a different purpose in presenting this view.

Fictional literature can be categorized into many different genres: drama, romance, science fiction, tragedy, comedy, horror, and gothic. Gothic fiction borrows from horror by sampling mystery, dire setting, and chilling architecture. Romance is sampled in gothic fiction by the use of characters, firm emotions, and misguided love. Greenblatt writes, " Gothic became a label for the macabre, mysterious, supernatural, and terrifying, especially the pleasurably terrifying, in literature generally; the link that Romantic-period writers had forged between the Gothic and antiquated spaces was eventually loosened" (584). Horace Walpole wrote The Castle of Otranto in 1764.

Edgar Allen Poe was an English short-story writer whose work reflects the traditional Gothic conventions of the time that subverted the ambivalence of the grotesque and arabesque. Through thematic conventions of the Gothic genre, literary devices and his own auteur, Edgar Allan Poe’s texts are considered sublime examples of Gothic fiction. The Gothic genre within Poe’s work such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, and The Raven, arouse the pervasive nature of the dark side of individualism and the resulting encroachment of insanity. Gothic tales are dominated by fear and terror and explore the themes of death and decay. The Gothic crosses boundaries into the realm of the unknown, arousing extremes of emotion through the catalyst of disassociation and subversion of presence.

Gothic fiction is a genre of literature consisting of horror, darkness, death, terror, castles and many other horrific elements to create suspense and to engage the reader. During the 18th century this specific genre became popular with the novel “The Castle of Otranto”, and later on developed into other known stories such as “Frankenstein” and “Dracula”. The name gothic is referring to the scary buildings which many of these stories takes place in. The gothic genre has also developed into German gothic and Victorian gothic. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is an example of a gothic short story, written by Edgar Allan Poe and published in 1943.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, a new literary genre sprung up, the Gothic story. In the United States, the most prominent exponent of Gothic fiction was Edgar Allen Poe, whose “horror” tales conjure up the dark side that many of us at least half-believe is hidden just beneath the surface of the most conventional lives. In this paper we will discuss the Gothic in light of two of Poe’s stories, “Ligeia”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and contrast Poe’s story with a somewhat dark tale of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, “The Minister’s Black Veil.” We will also analyze why Poe’s stories are Gothic’s and Hawthorne’s is not. Critic Mark Edmunson calls Gothic literature “the art of haunting”, adding that “Gothic shows that life, even at it’s most ostensibly innocent, is possessed, that the present is in thrall to the past. All are guilty; all will, in time, pay the price.

Walpole’s supernatural language presented in the Castle of Ortrano establishes the idea that spirituality is dominate in presenting terror alongside the morality tale which has become a popular Gothic convention in most contemporary and classical literature. The idea of having a prophecy to establish authority and the continuation of the Ortrano family indicates the Medieval Gothic influence which writers of a classical nature had fought inspiration from the Middle ... ... middle of paper ... ...dent with Maurier’s Rebecca in 1945 and Hill’s 1980’s classic ‘Woman in Black’ alongside other novels which demonstrate the idea of ghosts being dominate and also the main theme of any postmodernist book. This is where horror comes into place as well as film and television captured within the ‘terror frame’ where the idea of ghosts has become well-known in western countries (for entertainment) whereas, in most other non-western countries ghosts and spirituality and the supernatural have been there forever in cultures and folklore and myth’s told over a certain period and time. Therefore there seems to more change rather than continuity as beforehand the spiritual and supernatural elements have not been so dominate in pre-modernist novels compared to postmodernist novels which have a rich sensation of the supernatural being the epitome of all evil unlike monsters.