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Highly improbable and unexpected sequences of events that usually begin in ordinary situations and involve
supernatural elements
Contrast the oddness of these events with the minutiae of daily life so readers identify with the characters
Explores the dark, malevolent side of humanity
Main characters are people we can understand and perhaps identify with although often these are haunted,
estranged individuals
Lives depends on the success of the protagonist
Mood is dark, foreboding, menacing, bleak and creates an immediate response by the reader
Setting may be described in some detail if much of the story takes place in one location
Plot contains frightening and unexpected incidents
Violence, often graphic, occurs and may be accompanied by explicit sexuality
Most stories are told in the third person
The style is plain
The key ingredient in horror fiction is its ability to provoke fear or terror in readers, usually via something
demonic. There should be a sense of dread, unease, anxiety, or foreboding. Some critics have noted that
experiencing horror fiction is like reading about your worst nightmares.
There is some debate as to whether "horror" is a genre or, like "adventure," an aspect that may be found in
several genres. Horror is a certain mood or atmosphere that might be found in a variety of places.
Traditionally, horror was associated with certain archetypes such as demons, witches, ghosts, vampires and
the like. However, this can be found in other genres, especially fantasy. If horror is a genre, then it deals with
a protagonist dealing with overwhelming dark and evil forces.
Gothic Horror
GOTHIC is a term sometimes used instead of HORROR. As Grolier says, "The earliest Gothic romance, a class
of novel dealing in the mysterious and supernatural, which emerged shortly after the establishment of the novel
form itself, was Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1764). Reacting against the literalism and confined
domesticity of Samuel Richardson, Walpole indulged a contemporary taste for the "Gothic," which for the 18thcentury reader conjured up a medieval world of barbarous passions enacted in picturesque melodramatic settings
of ruined castles, ancient monasteries, and wild landscapes. Within a plot designed for suspense, a delicate
feminine sensibility is subjected to the onslaught of elemental forces of good and evil. Sanity and chastity are
constantly threatened, and over all looms the suggestion that evil and irrationality will destroy civilization."
Atmosphere
The dark, brooding, threatening atmosphere becomes the main character in many horror stories. Thus, mood and
setting are as or more important than plot and characters. The atmosphere is often portrayed in
considerable detail so it becomes alive and immediately threatening.
A type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th century in England. Gothic romances were
mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they were usually set against dark
backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was the forerunner
of the type, which included the works of Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Charles R. Maturin, and the
novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey satirizes Gothic romances. The
influence of the genre can be found in some works of Coleridge, Le Fanu, Poe, and the Bronts. During the 1960s
so-called Gothic novels became enormously popular in England and the United States. Seemingly modeled on
Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, these novels usually concern spirited young
women, either governesses or new brides, who go to live in large gloomy mansions populated by peculiar
servants and precocious children and presided over by darkly handsome men with mysterious pasts. Popular
practitioners of this genre are Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Catherine Cookson, and Dorothy Eden.
The gothic novel is an English literary genre, which can be said to have been born with The Castle of Otranto
(1764) by Horace Walpole. It is the predecessor to modern horror fiction and it above all has led to the common
definition of gothic as being connected to the dark and horrific.
Prominent features of gothic novels included terror, mystery, the supernatural, doom, death, decay, old buildings
with ghosts, madness, hereditary curses and so on.
and sweeping it away with hearty common sense and normalcy. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein 1818 is undoubtedly
the greatest literary triumph of the gothic novel in this its classical period.
Later Developments
In England, the gothic novel as a genre had largely played itself out by 1840. This was largely helped by the oversaturation of the genre by cheap 'pulp' writers (works that would later morph into cheap horror fiction in the form of
Penny dreadfuls as well as a reduction in the genres respectability since the turn of the century caused by the
publication of works such as Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk in(1796, a shocking (particularly at the time) tale
of sex, violence and debauchery that almost bordered on the pornographic. However it had a lasting effect on the
development of literary form in the Victorian period. It led to the Victorian craze for short ghost stories and the
short shocking macabre tale mastered by Edgar Allan Poe. It also was a heavy influence on Charles Dickens who
read gothic novels as a teenager and incorporated their gloomy atmosphere and melodrama into his own works,
but shifting them to a more modern period. The mood and themes of the gothic novel held a particular fascination
for the Victorians, with their morbid obsession with mourning rituals, Mementos, and mortality in general, which
led to them becoming a widespread literary influence.
Post-Victorian Legacy
By the 1880s it was time for revival as a gothic as a semi-respectable literary form. This was the period of the
gothic works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Machen and Oscar Wilde, and the most famous gothic villain ever
appeared in Bram Stokers Dracula 1897. From these, the gothic genre strictly considered gave way to modern
horror fiction though many literary critics use the term to cover the entire genre: though many modern writers of
horror or indeed other fiction extend considerable gothic sensibilities: Anne Rice being one example, as well as
some of the less sensationalist works of Stephen King. The gothic tradition has also expanded its boundaries to
films and music, as well as the new media forms of the internet.
1.
Horror is a film genre seeking to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by
playing on the audience's primal fears. Inspired by literature from authors like Edgar Allan Poe,
Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley,horror films have for more than a century featured scenes that
startle the viewer.