Gothic Literature

"There, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white... something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell."- Bram Stoker, Dracula

 

Dracula is one of the most famous and typical gothic novels and was written in 1897. It is written in the form of diary entries and letters from several narrators’ perspectives. The name ‘Dracula’ came to be when Stoker was reading about Romanian history and chose this to replace ‘Count Wampyr’, which was his original name for the villain.

 

Stoker was living in Whitby when he was writing Dracula and parts of the novel are set there. This accounts for the continuing popularity of Whitby as a gothic site – many gothic festivals and ‘ghost walks’ are held here.

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j6b4Cd3OZo

 

 

 “The night is chill; the forest bear; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? ­There is not wind enough in the air to move away the ringlet curl from the lovely lady’s cheek” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from Christabel

 

 

“For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.” Coleridge’s best known poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner displays many gothic characteristics, however the end of the poem reaches a relatively tame conclusion.

 

 

 

 

 

“An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions, except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which grating on the rusty hinges were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness.”- Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

 

 

 

 

 

Christabel was written in 1816 and its strong theme of seduction and corruption of innocence has a strong gothic dimension, however the poem was never finished. This left Coleridge questioning his poetic ability.

Written in 1764, The Castle of Otranto is widely considered the first truly gothic novel. Walpole introduces many set-pieces that the Gothic novel will become famous for, such as mysterious sounds, doors opening independently of a person, and the fleeing of a beautiful heroine from an incestuous male figure.

 

 

“I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might by the least scruple of an overdose or at least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

 

 

Written in 1886, the theme of horror is combined with deep psychological insight. Sigmund Freud later said that literary creations could tell us a great deal more than rational explanations about the real workings of the human psyche. His paper The Uncanny acknowledges the gothic appeal – ‘the uncanny…undoubtedly belongs to all that is terrible – to all that arouses dread and creeping horror.’

 

 

 

 

 

“It excites me to be close to him, to think over and over, I can kill him and I will kill him but not now.”

- Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

 

 

After suffering the terrible grief of her young child, Anne Rice began to write her novels The Vampire Chronicles. She was writing at a time when novels, films and stories about vampires were uncommon. A film version was released in 1994 starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst.