...to examine the novel Dracula as authored by Stoker. I will be looking to determine whether or not it can be classified as a Gothic novel. Initially, I will present a short story of the Gothic and dwell briefly on the era of its publication. The paper will also examine the various characteristics that are common amongst gothic literature so as to run a comparison with this work. Several aspects like the surroundings, natural environment, the role of females in the Gothic novel, atmosphere, as well as the story’s Villain, will be compared with the elements that can be seen in the publication Dracula (Frank, 1988). I will attempt to find out the reasons why Gothic novels are normally so attractive. It is essential to break certain taboos so as to develop an atmosphere of fear and danger. I will examine Dracula to determine whether or not it contains similar elements. Meaning of Gothic novel According to the Oxford dictionary, Gothic refers to the architectural style that was common in Western Europe in the period that span between the 12th and 16th Century. It was mainly characterized by a ribbed vault, pointed arch as well as pillars that are clustered (Bernstein, 1991). This term was mostly used in connection with an individual that behaved like a barbarian. This was because of the destructive and primitive German tribe that was called the Goths. The Goths used to invade Western and Eastern empires from the 3rd to the 5th centuries (Le Tellier, 1980).The Gothic genre has a flexible...
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...The term 'gothic' has many different forms. The most important and original form is architecture during the medieval period. It starts out with the great cathedral, Saint-Denis, of Paris. Then the Westminster Abbey of London was built. These are characterized by their pointed arches and flying buttresses. Gothicism also came in the form of art. Tres Riches Heures du duc de Berry, by the Limburg brothers, showed elegance through statements in the best known way of gothic art. This popular style of art is called manuscript illuminations. Manuscript illuminations are text followed by decoration, usually gold. During the mid-18th century, literature took a new step having the first gothic novel, "The Castle of Otranto," first published in 1764. This novel was combined with a horror and mystery genre (Martindale). Gothicism began to be apart of churches by having stained glass windows and pictures of biblical people. The style of nudity from Adam and Eve was also portrayed to be gothic. As Gothicism grew it rose to the 1980's and started a movement called punk, and later related to Fantasy Art. It then, in the 1990s, blossomed to what is called Neo-Gothic Art. It is inspired by Charles Alexander Moffat and is a period when the people wanted to express themselves as more than normal in a number of ways. A person of example would be Marilyn Manson, whose personal style and music is characterized as being "dark" and "mysterious" (Folkenroth). Characteristics of gothic novels have scenes...
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...Her grandest gothic delusion is her perception of General Tilney as a cruel, gothic villain with horrible mysteries, intentions, and crime. Her desire for the gothic to be real at the abbey results in her latching on to anything that would fulfill her wish, in this case, the General’s less than affectionate manner towards his dead wife (181; ch. 22). The abbey amplifies her misconceptions with its locked doors and an inhabitant with “the air and attitude of a Montoni” (186; ch. 23). In the subsequent chapters, Catherine continues to delude herself with thoughts of murder or imprisonment, and these ideas blind her from the reality of the General just being a stern, manipulative, materialistic Victorian patriarch who hopes to gain a rich daughter-in-law....
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...Frankenstein as a Gothic Novel Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is considered as a Gothic novel but it can be seen as a compilation of both Gothic and Romantic because of the significance of the sublime. Certain events and settings in the novel present the gothic themes. Shelley uses the different themes in her novel to evoke feelings of horror and terror in the reader. Frankenstein engages in a quest in pushing the realms of science to their limits which leads him to playing god and creating an unnatural being using science. One of the themes Shelley uses in the novel to create the gothic presence is the theme of Forbidden Knowledge. Mary Shelley introduces the ideas that science is capable of being very dangerous and has consequences through the character of Victor Frankenstein. Shelley’s time was described as the age of unprecedented scientific discoveries, which influenced her in writing of Frankenstein. The process of the creation of his creation was influenced by the Italian physician Luigi Galvani who discovered “animal electricity” which manifests with the twitching of nerves and muscles when an electric current is applied. Frankenstein seeks to find “the secrets of heaven and earth” to fulfil his quest. He calls them secrets; he is aware they are not to be known and should not be found. Frankenstein knows that acquiring such knowledge would not be easy as he states “how dangerous the acquirement of knowledge”. Frankenstein is aware of the uneasy task of seeking...
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...Gothic Horror is a term used to depict fictitious work that has incorporated a lot of horror scenes as well as elements of the unreal world, exploring the conflict between good and evil and dealing with the supernatural in some sort of way. The episodic novel Dracula written by Bram Stoker in 1897 and the movie Blade by Stephen Norrington created in 1998 bring to the fore many conventions relating to the Gothic Horror genre despite their vastly different contexts. Gothic elements of imprisonment, death and blood are clearly represented through each of the texts. Stoker and Norrington present these conventions through a variety of literary and film techniques, paying particular attention to character and setting to explore the elements of the genre. Through these interactions, the audience can feel a sense of Gothic Horror in which the composers of the two texts aim to convey. The setting is a prominent aspect of Stoker’s novel, as it creates the mood and atmosphere and affects the characters of the novel. The castle in Dracula is the main setting that the reader is introduced to and sets the journey on a mysterious, evil and suspenseful road. Jonathan believes that “the castle is a veritable prison” and he is the prisoner. Dracula’s castle is situated in a rural location, said to be the superstitious west were all the mythical creatures from vampires, ghosts, witches and wolves are found. To reinforce the concept of imprisonment, all the doors in the castle are locked and Jonathan...
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...Gothic fiction combines the emotion of love, despair and horror. The genre continues to be a very successful genre of literature today and is widely used today for both entertainment and education purposes. For two centuries, G has gripped and frightens readers of different ages. During the eighteenth century England, Gothic had become synonymous with the Middle Ages. It was a period perceived as chaotic, unenlightened and superstitious. “Renaissance critics erroneously believed that Gothic architecture was created by Germanic tribes and regarded it as ugly and barbaric. This erroneous attribution continued through the eighteenth century.” (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/gothic/gothic.html) Horace Walpole first introduced...
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...Communication 20 December 2012 1812 words Jane Austen is without doubt one of the greatest as well as most widely read novel writers in English literature. It is not easy to identify her with some literary movement. As Andrew H. Wright suggests in his book Jane Austen’s Novels, she is not really a writer of the nineteenth century to be called Romantic, “too much a person of her time to be called Classic, too original and too great to be considered a precursor or an apotheosis... .”[1] She is unique as well as her books are, especially Northanger Abbey. When thinking about this novel in detail, it becomes quite confusing, as Northanger Abbey can be placed in several generic categories. The most important one is bildungsroman. Bildungsroman is a German term for a novel of formation, as J. A. Cuddon states it means “literally an ‘upbringing’ or ‘education’ novel […] it refers to a novel which is an account of the youthful development of a hero or heroine […] it describes the processes by which maturity is achieved through the various ups and downs of life.”[2] We do see a development in the heroine of Northanger Abbey. However, Austen’s constant mocking of Catherine and her use of irony make it hard to distinguish to what extent Northanger Abbey is a bildungsroman and to what extent Jane Austen uses Catherine and her transformation as a device to create a parody of a gothic novel, although the first one seems to exceed the latter. “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy...
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...Charlotte Brontë described Heathcliff as a ‘man’s shape animated by demon life – a ghoul” To what extent do you think this is an accurate assessment of the ways in which Heathcliff is presented in the novel? Heathcliff is presented in this novel in various different ways. He is a character that arguably shifts from having human qualities, to presenting traits of the Byronic hero and finally becoming a typical gothic villain. The doomed central character of Heathcliff in this gothic novel could be paralleled to that of Satan in John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ where Satan is cast out by God from Heaven into the terrible darkness of Hell. One could argue that Brontë does in fact present Heathcliff as “a ghoul” by making a connection between him and the exotic and describing him from the very start as “dark almost as if [he] came from the devil” showing that his striking physical appearance, just like the Byronic hero, makes him unable to integrate into a higher social class. In an attempt to confine and dehumanize Heathcliff, Hindley forces him into servitude; although Heathcliff endures it, he plots how he can “paint the house-front with Hindley’s blood”. His cruelty serves to conceal the heart of a romantic hero and the fact that Heathcliff is subject to xenophobia which was a common sentiment among the British people in the colonial days of the early nineteenth century leads him to become an outcast and makes him a “child of the storm”, someone product of circumstances and...
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...Jacob McKinnis Professor Bess Fox Major Women Writers 3 November 2015 Romanticism in Frankenstein Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, is well known throughout the world as a classic piece of gothic literature with elements of disturbing and macabre imagery. It is easy then to overlook the many ways in which Frankenstein is a primary example of Romanticism due to the characteristics of the way it was written and the time period in which Mary Shelley lived. Shelley’s Frankenstein is not meant to be looked at as a purely gothic piece of literature but rather a literary work of Romanticism that masquerades as a horror story. To start with, the monster created by Frankenstein is paramount to the representation of Romanticism in the novel. The monster is a Romantic hero because of the rejection it must bear from normal society. Wherever he goes, the monster is chased away because of its hideous appearance and its huge size. Shelley makes an effort explaining how often that people in conventional society reject that which is out of the ordinary or that which is unnerving and disfigured treading on the borders of our society. It’s hard to blame the monster for what happens to him, and Shelley provokes from the reader a sympathetic response for a creature that has been established as a misunderstood and lost soul in a world it was never meant to live in. The monster tries to fit into a regular community, but because it is grotesque to look at and does not know the social norms...
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...‘As with many Gothic Texts, Frankenstein challenges set oppositions.’ Discuss this statement in light of the novel. In Gothic texts, a common theme is for the authors to write about oppositions. It is often the case that oppositions are challenged in books from this particular genre, such as the opposition of rational and irrational and civilised and primitive. This is shown, for example, in the book ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, where the characters of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde can be seen as parts of the same person. This is further shown in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ where oppositions are explored such as good and evil, human and monster and life and death. In particular, the novel Frankenstein is concentrated on exploring the opposition between the monstrous and human. Shelley challenges the opposition between the monstrous and human through her main protagonists: Victor Frankenstein and the Monster. Victor defines the creature as monstrous from the start, purely on the basis of his physical appearance. ‘His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.’ In this quote, Victor describes the monsters appearance and portrays...
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...Throughout the years, American Literature has been drastically influenced by the Southern Gothic genre of Literature. This is largely seen through the traits of Southern Gothic that have been adopted and reproduced by American Literature. These traits of Southern Gothic are portrayed through the themes of novels and short stories. These themes include race, good vs. evil, unrequited love, being an outsider, and violence. Some stories that would fall into the true Southern Gothic genre include “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’connor, “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is about a family that plans a trip to Florida...
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...Marek Hullinger Mike Fiscel English W132 26 September 2013 From Tribes to Literature The word Goth derives from a German tribe referred to as the Goths. The term Gothic was later used during medieval times for the construction of buildings with pointed arches and vaults (Lad). In my essay, I chose to discuss two pieces of Gothic fiction. The first piece of Gothic fiction I decided to discuss is, “The Cask of Amontillado.” It was published in 1846 by the famous short-story writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe. The second piece of Gothic fiction I chose to discuss is, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” It was published in 1966 by Joyce Carol Oates. In Gothic literature there any many characteristics to its writing and famous short-stories such as “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” contain many of those Gothic fiction characteristics. Summary “The Cask of Amontillado” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. Montresor is the main character of the story and also acts as the narrator. The story begins by him vowing his vengeance towards Fortunato for insulting him. Montresor hides his animosity towards Fortunato so he does not expect anything. He maintains a deceiving presence towards Fortunato and plots to exploit Fortunato’s weakness for luxurious wines. Carnival season came upon the city and Montresor finds Fortunato at the carnival. He invites him to try some of his sherry at his home. Montresor doubts Fortunato’s skill with...
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...Shoqarqwa@hotmail.com Date of Submission: February 29, 2016 Student ID: 2739275 Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 1 2. [Main Part I] 2.1 Gothic Element 2.2 Feminism 3. Conclusion 1 [Bibliography] 1. Introduction: “All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.” By Georg Eliot It goes without saying that the more one ponders upon the masterpiece written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the more compelled one finds themselves to, not only reverence what she brought forth, but to also acclaim the diverse interpretations one can come up with of a text written well over a century ago. The story talks about a woman who is diagnosed with "temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency" (Gilman 1) and thus is sentenced by her physician to a rest cure. Following her husband’s and doctor’s orders, her suffering grows worse and worse and signs of depression, anxiety and dissociation manifest, quite the opposite of what was supposed to happen. Having the ability to scare and horrify the reader, this unique story had been considered as a classic in Gothic literature. However, it has recently been perceived as an early indictment of the patriarchal social structure and therefore has become a classic in feminist literature. There are many signs of Gothic elements and feminist ideas presented via symbolism, and one of the most prominent figures presented in the story is the house. In this paper, I will...
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...when I make the original plan, in the opening defence. With their help, I get to know where I should go next. Last but not the least, I extend my thanks to my classmates and my dearest parents for their encouragement and support. Wheneve I feel frustrated with my work, they are always there. Gothicism in Detective Fiction The Hound of the Baskervilles Abstract: As one of the most influential people who are never alive, Sherlock Holmes, written by Arthur Conan Doyle, attracts researches. The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of series detective fictions about him. This paper is an attempt to give a specific analysis on how gothic features perform in the depict of the characters, scenes and plot and to reveal the influence made by gothicism on appreciation of the book in part of the readers Gothic novel as one genre of the English literature leads habitually with darkness and horror including...
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...Literature Creation Methods of Poe’s Gothic Tales ——Review of The Fall of the House of Usher 英81 高云君 2008012742 As one of the most famous works by Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher is the a masterpiece in American gothic literature. The prose is full with of elements and details which are unsettling and macabre. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Poe’s gothic novels have always been my readings before bed since I was younga child. In my childhood, following the unnamed narrator and walking towards that old and creepy house, I was immersed in the horrible storyline and experience the fantastic feeling of nightmare. Today when I look back on this literature work, I get some deeper understanding and . Ⅰ. Hellish environment setting ：Use of double space The whole environment and different scenes in the story are so hellish that the reader feels a kind of inexplicable asphyxia. I summarize some typical elements Poe uses to build a gothic atmosphere. Day: a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn. Location: a singularly dreary tract of country. House and surrounding: upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees. The precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn. If that can be called the exterior space, then the internal...
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