1. Gothicism and Gothic elements in the work of Edgar Allan Poe

2. Origins  Gothic-“belonging to or redolent of the Dark Ages; portentously gloomy or horrifying”. The Goths were a Northern Germanic European people whose ways and beliefs differed largely from those of Greco-Roman Classical civilisation farther south. To the southern outlook, the Goths were wholly uncivilized and barbarous”.

3. Goths in the Middle Ages and Goths nowdays

4. Gothicism and Literature  Gothicism makes you think of: superstition, anxiety, fear, death, supernatural, decay, madness.  The element that was predominant in Gothic works “was an atmosphere conducive to anxieties”.  Inspired by the mythical fiction and “medieval romances”, the Gothic genre made up stories of knights, ghosts, monsters, full of terrors and adventures.

5. Gothic romance or Dark Romanticism  Even though ‘Gothicism’ and ‘Romanticism’ seem two different things, they are actually quite similar. They share some common traits, such as the highlight on emotions and imagination, the connection with nature, wilderness and the constant obsession with death.

6. The Graveyard poetry

7. Did Edgar Allan Poe invent the Gothic genre?  No, Gothicism existed way before Edgar Allan Poe was born, but his work had a major impact on the genre.  Poe’s fiction leaves borderlines between reality, illusion and madness unsolved rather then, “in the manner of his contemporaries, domesticating Gothic motifs or rationalizing mysteries”.  “Poe’s greatest literary achievement was his renovation of the terror tale from what had been its principal intent, to entertain by means of ‘curdling the blood’, to use a widely current phrase of the times, into what have been recognized some of the most sophisticated creations in psychological fiction in the English language”.

8. Madness: major Gothic element  Reading Gothic literature can make people see things, which means that it develops their imagination and while they are reading, it transports them from the mundane to the supernatural.  In determining the irrationality in Gothic literature, we let ourselves to be drawn into the strange “logic” of fictional madness.  In literary and scientific writing, madness becomes a matter of rationality, reflection and representation and Gothic internalizes madness.  Gothic is like a contest of insanity, a charade of gruesome exploitations, that exhibits disturbed and vulnerable figures, just like madness once provided some sort of entertainment [like freak shows].

9. Are the creative writers mad? Are creativity and madness related?  First of all, art has its own multiplicity.  Many times, the “pathology” of a literary character, is used to conclude the “pathology” of its writer.  The erratic mental health of talented writers, signifies that madness and creativity are linked.  But that link has not been proven yet.  If there were a link, it might make people and even writers to be bias and to have a stereotyped view of their mental health.