Going Gothic

When I mention the term "Gothic" in connection to literature, you probably have a very specific set of visuals in mind: towering spires, gloomy moors, unsettling grotesqueries, supernatural dangers, and a pervading sense of horror. Maybe even a surly raven or two to boot. But what does Gothic really mean, and why is it "Gothic"?

The answers begin with the Renaissance (bear with me here), a cultural movement bridging the medieval and early modern periods of European history. Because the Renaissance was totally obsessed with antiquity and classical Greek and Roman aesthetics, the architecture and ideas of the high medieval period—imagine those tall, pointy cathedrals—fell deeply out of fashion, and picked up the label "Gothic", named after a Germanic people who were seen as barbarians by the immensely civilised people of Rome. Thus, when a new genre of stories arose which drew heavily on the settings and characteristics of medieval ruins, as well as other connotations of "medieval-ness" as percieved by 18th-century thinkers, what better name could be applied to it?

The genre of Gothic fiction is firmly tied up with imagery based on the namesake architecture, which was having a revival at the time, and these stories were often set in typically medieval buildings such as castles, monasteries, or crypts—or their ruins. Spooky. These locations feed into a sense of the past oppressing the present in some way, usually involving horrifying secrets and violence. Claustrophobia and isolation are common themes which really build up the fear factor. Even more spooky!

Gothic stories frequently incorporate a strong element of superstition and the supernatural. Ghosts, demons, and other sorts of evil spirits are likely to appear at any moment, and even when they aren't actually there you can feel the threat of them. This requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, mainly carried by the thrilling extremity of emotion. Characters are faced with awe-inspiring sublimity, then with great terrors that can hardly be described, both of which heighten the emotion of the texts beyond the mundane. Add to this the ever-present plausibility of death (or worse), and you have a real horror!

The genesis of Gothic fiction is said to have been The Castle of Otranto, a novel by Thomas Walpole written in 1764. The story was apparently inspired by Walpole's Gothic Revival home in Twickenham, Strawberry Hill House, and a nightmare he had while staying there. Like many Gothic stories that would follow, The Castle of Otranto uses framing devices to add a sheen of authenticity to the tale: in this case, it claims to be translated from a 16th-century manuscript that had been rediscovered in someone's old family collection. The plot itself is filled to the brim with prophecies, imprisonments, secret identities, forced marriages, apparitions, and untimely deaths. The castle in which it takes place even crumbles into ruin at the end of the story, in true Gothic style.

Following the success of The Castle of Otranto, other writers across the UK latched onto Walpole's ideas. One of the most notable of them was Ann Radcliffe, who only wrote a few popular Gothic novels in the 1790s but reached truly impressive heights of fame with them. In our current day, the Gothic stories that have lasted the best from Britain are Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula, which have greatly shaped the way we think about Gothic-ness today. Across the pond, Edgar Allan Poe basically made Gothic fiction and poetry his entire personality, further defining its conventions.

Although the genre of pure Gothic fiction more or less imploded under its own complexity by the 20th century, its influences have reached far and wide. The Brontë sisters all made good use of Gothic conventions through a less spiritual and more female-focused perspective, and Charles Dickens employed use of the genre's trappings to develop an iconic atmospere in his works. Other genres such as horror, Southern Gothic, and dark academia are modern successors to the Gothic that remain popular today.

Clearly, despite Gothic fiction's preoccupation with the past, it has no intention to leave us in the future.