Gothic fiction combines horror, romance and the supernatural, typically set among ruined castles, abbeys and other haunted architecture that stage its themes of imprisonment, decay and transgression. Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, published anonymously as a purported medieval translation on Christmas Eve 1764 and acknowledged as Walpole's own invention in the 1765 second edition, is credited as the first Gothic novel and the genre's founding work. Gothic fiction developed alongside Romanticism, dramatizing the movement's fascination with the sublime and its suspicion of Enlightenment rationality through supernatural terror rather than argument; its conventions, hidden identities, secret passages, persecuted heroines and ancestral curses, recur from eighteenth century England through the American Gothic tradition.
Facts
Place of OriginEngland, with the first work labelled Gothic being Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. 1 Notable ExampleDracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, alongside Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. 1 Defining TraitAn atmosphere of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. 1 Connections
Associated With
Romanticism, Movements Gothic fiction arose as a dark, supernatural current within Romanticism, sharing its fascination with the sublime and its suspicion of Enlightenment rationality.
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encompasses Form
Features Author
Source As I Lay Dying (Wikipedia)
Beloved, Works Scholarship reads Beloved through Gothic convention (the haunted house at 124 Bluestone Road, the returned dead) applied to the history of American slavery, a Feminine or Southern Gothic rather than the novel's primary classification.
Source Toni Morrison and the Gothic (The Gothic Library)
Tales including The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart place Poe among the genre's central figures.
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the genre's founding work; Walpole's own added subtitle, A Gothic Story, named it.
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Frankenstein (1818) draws directly on the Gothic tradition Walpole founded, with its isolated settings and horror at the unnatural.
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
The Picture of Dorian Gray already in-genre Gothic Fiction; Wilde himself carried no in-genre edge to it.
Source Oscar Wilde (Wikipedia)
The genre's founding work.
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Source The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Wikipedia)
Source The Sound and the Fury (Wikipedia)
Source To Kill a Mockingbird (Wikipedia)
Influenced
Source Gothic Fiction (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Gothic Fiction (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Introduction
Gothic fiction is characterised by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present.
Lead section
The first work to be labelled as Gothic was Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, later subtitled A Gothic Story.
Lead section, third paragraph
Later, Gothic fiction evolved through well-known works like Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde, Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, and The Beetle (1897) by Richard Marsh.
- Influenced: Horror Fiction, lead section, on horror as a branch of Gothic
View the Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.- s.v. Gothic novel
- Associated With: Romanticism
View the Source Toni Morrison and the Gothic (The Gothic Library)
The Gothic LibraryFeatures Author: Beloved, Toni Morrison and the Gothic
The Norton Anthology of World Literature
W. W. Norton & Company- Features Author: Horace Walpole
- Features Author: Edgar Allan Poe
- Features Author: Mary Shelley
- Features Author: The Castle of Otranto
- Features Author: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Oscar Wilde (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Features Author: Oscar Wilde, Opening biographical summary, Dorian Gray
Wilde is best known for his Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
Features Author: Oscar Wilde, Opening biographical section, Gothic novel
Wilde is best known for his Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
View the Source The Sound and the Fury (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: The Sound and the Fury, Lead section, genreQuote, Features Author: The Sound and the Fury, Lead section, genre
its bleak and candid portrait of Southern life in the early 20th century is paradigmatic of the Southern Gothic genre
To Kill a Mockingbird (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: To Kill a Mockingbird, Lead section, genreQuote, Features Author: To Kill a Mockingbird, Lead section, genre
As a Southern Gothic novel and Bildungsroman
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Lead section, genreQuote, Features Author: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Lead section, genre
is a French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831
As I Lay Dying (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: As I Lay Dying, Lead section, genreQuote, Features Author: As I Lay Dying, Lead section, genre
is a 1930 Southern Gothic novel by American author William Faulkner
Frequently Asked Questions
Which well-known works count as Gothic fiction besides The Castle of Otranto?
Carmilla, Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray all follow Walpole's Otranto in the Gothic tradition.
After Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, the first work labelled Gothic, the tradition grew through Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is a further notable example, and the atlas also lists The Picture of Dorian Gray among the genre's works. What ties them together is an atmosphere of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present.
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