The Gothic
A Wider Reading List
What is a Gothic Novel?
Gothic novel
a style of novel, especially popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, characterized by mysterious settings, an atmosphere of gloom and
terror, supernatural happenings, and often violence and horror, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Gothic Fiction
genre of literature that combines elements of both Horror and Romance; designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling
accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural.
Characteristics of Gothic Fiction
A struggle for knowledge
A vision of knowledge
A complaint (bewailing a situation or the loss of a person)
An exploration of emotions, fear in particular.
An exploration of life choices / Trying to make sense of life
An exploration of chance, faith and decision-making.
An exploration of "the other" by setting the pieces in a distinct imaginary world from the beginning of the work, either by setting the
piece in foreign countries, describing strange phenomena etc,
A certain sense of hesitation towards crossing boundaries between "real" and "fiction"; Between "lifelike" and "fantastic".
A villain experiencing inner turmoil and emotional problems, along with a hero with superior emotions.
An exploration of the extreme through exaggerations etc
It strains at the limits of mortality/immortality; morality/immorality; reason/emotion; order/disorder; mind/body; masculine/feminine
Gothic fiction consists of a set of analyzable displacements about what it means to be a human being and gendered
“The darker side" of life; a world of pain and destruction/ fear and anxiety which shadows the daylight world of love and normality
Author
Title
Austen, Jane
Beckford, William
Bronte, Charlotte
Bronte, Emily
Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir
James, Henry
Lewis, Mathew
Poe, Edgar Allen
Northanger Abbey
Vathek
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Turn of the Screw
The Monk
Tales of Mystery and
Imagination
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Frankenstein
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dracula
The Castle of Otranto
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Radcliffe, Ann
Shelley, Mary
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Stoker, Bram
Walpole, Horace
Wilde, Oscar
Modern
Gothic
Author
Title
Banks, Ian
Banks, Ian
Brautigan, Richard
Walking on Glass
The Wasp Factory
The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic
Western
Naked Lunch
Rebecca
The Name of the Rose
Neuromancer
The Woman in Black
A Pale view of hills
Salem's lot
The Call of Cthulu
Gormenghast
The Separation
The Affirmation
The Crying of Lot 49
Interview with the Vampire
Burroughs, William S.
Du Maurier, Daphne
Eco, Umberto
Gibson, William
Hill, Susan
Ishiguro, Kazuo
King, Stephen
Lovecraft, H.P.
Peake, Mervyn
Priest, Christopher
Priest, Christopher
Pynchon, Thomas
Rice, Anne