We as a society like to be entertained in all sorts of manner. Most like to laugh, some like to cry, some like to feel the warmth in their heart from love, then there are the few who like to be scared. We like to feel the adrenaline running through our veins our blood pumping, and our heart racing just from being scared. Somehow we find joy in being scared whether it through a scary movie or horror novel that we are currently reading, we have to give thanks to the man who started this genre with a single book. That man is Horace Walpole a British author who in 1765 he published his book “The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story”. This book’s title is actually a sophisticated joke towards Walpole’s audience the term “Gothic” used by Walpole in
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Poe was an American writer in the Victorian era when most critics were dismissing the gothic genre and it had fallen from being the dominate genre in the literary world. Poe however focused less on the traditional elements of gothic stories and more on the psychology of his characters as they often descended into madness. A perfect example of Poe’s literary genius within the gothic genre is "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839). This short story explores these 'terrors of the soul' while revisiting classic Gothic tropes of aristocratic decay, death, and madness. Not only that but Poe contributed a sophisticated analysis of the psychological processes, an insight into a person’s unconscious, and an insistence on the unity of tone and mood. His work shows the close connection between the genre of Gothic fiction and the genre of detective fiction, which grows out of the Gothic, and then continues to overlap between Gothic fiction and science …show more content…
German gothic fiction is usually described by the term Schauerroman also known as a shudder novel. This type of novel also shared similar plot and motifs with its cousin the British gothic novel. However, while the term Schauerroman is equated with the term "Gothic novel", this is only partially true. Both genres are based on the terrifying side of the Middle Ages, and both frequently feature the same elements of castles, ghosts, and monsters. Schauerroman's key elements are necromancy and secret societies and it is remarkably more pessimistic than the British Gothic novel. All those elements are the basis for Friedrich von Schiller's unfinished novel The Ghost-Seer (1786–1789). While the secret society motif is present in the Karl Grosse's Horrid Mysteries
Poe was an American writer in the Victorian era when most critics were dismissing the gothic genre and it had fallen from being the dominate genre in the literary world. Poe however focused less on the traditional elements of gothic stories and more on the psychology of his characters as they often descended into madness. A perfect example of Poe’s literary genius within the gothic genre is "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839). This short story explores these 'terrors of the soul' while revisiting classic Gothic tropes of aristocratic decay, death, and madness. Not only that but Poe contributed a sophisticated analysis of the psychological processes, an insight into a person’s unconscious, and an insistence on the unity of tone and mood. His work shows the close connection between the genre of Gothic fiction and the genre of detective fiction, which grows out of the Gothic, and then continues to overlap between Gothic fiction and science …show more content…
German gothic fiction is usually described by the term Schauerroman also known as a shudder novel. This type of novel also shared similar plot and motifs with its cousin the British gothic novel. However, while the term Schauerroman is equated with the term "Gothic novel", this is only partially true. Both genres are based on the terrifying side of the Middle Ages, and both frequently feature the same elements of castles, ghosts, and monsters. Schauerroman's key elements are necromancy and secret societies and it is remarkably more pessimistic than the British Gothic novel. All those elements are the basis for Friedrich von Schiller's unfinished novel The Ghost-Seer (1786–1789). While the secret society motif is present in the Karl Grosse's Horrid Mysteries