By: Danielle Steward 3 rd Period

 The Gothic Era is when writers of the seventeen hundreds started writing novels that were based in terrifying and dark places, which were inspired by the architecture of the thirteen hundreds during the medieval times.

 It's literature contained many mysterious settings. They were often placed in graveyards, old houses and prisons.  It began the age of "horror stories", because there was hauntings and murders.

 Author, Horace Walpole, wrote the first Gothic story that set off the Gothic Fiction genre in England.

 It started in the eighteenth century and It was known as an imitation of the medieval times and it featured many accounts of terrifying experiences.

 The writing done in the Gothic Fiction was often dark and horrific and it was known for its “mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, “doubles,” madness (especially mad women), secrets, hereditary curses, and persecuted maidens”.

 It combines horror and romance. Gothic Fiction contained characters like maids, monks, bandits, dragons, angels, and heroes. It showed obsession with medieval themes and it found its most natural settings in the buildings of this style—castles, mansions, and monasteries, often remote, crumbling, and ruined.

 The writings of gothic fiction were known to be scary and terrifying, yet pleasing.  It satisfied the readers.

 Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory wrote novels after the first novel Horace Walpole wrote dealing with Gothic fiction.

 The first wave of Gothic novels started between 1765 and  Readers like the suspense and the supernatural happenings. It drew them in.

 There were many topics in the Gothic fiction novels that weren’t often discussed. Such as seduction, incestuous rape, matricide and other murders, and diabolism.

 There is a difference between the Gothic time period and the Gothic Fiction period. The Gothic Fiction period did not take place at the same time as the actual Gothic Period.  The authors were using what they knew of the Gothic time period to create stories. They also used each other’s work to add on to.

 The most famous parody of the Gothic is Jane Austen's novel,Northanger Abbey. It was written in 1818 and it was similar to a “sequel” of the Radcliffe stories that were written before hers.

 Gothic Fiction novels were Anti-Catholic, because they did not agree with the law systems at the time under the Roman Catholic Church.

 The original “goths” were shunned because many artists of the time thought that the went against the original classical Roman ways and that they killed Roman architects.

 The laws at the time were cruel and the novels of the Gothic time showed how people were tortured in dungeons and prisons. The writers used that as an advantage to add terror into their stories.

 The authors of the Gothic Fiction genre were in a different time period as the Gothic Era, so they did not share the same views, because it was not the same.

 The scenes from a Gothic Fiction novel are based on the architecture of the Gothic Era and they contained cathedrals and castles. It was that of the medieval times. They were all said to be “dark and mysterious.”

 Art had changed over the period. Statues were made differently and there were different designs that artists had. The typical statue had a very slender body and an oval shaped face.

 Today, it’s more so known as “horror” stories and examples of it can be found in romantic novels, classic plays, and on television.