1. The Gothic Period

2. What is Gothic Literature
A genre of late-18th-century literature that featured brooding, mysterious settings and plots and set the stage for what we now call “horror stories.”
Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, set inside a medieval castle, was the first major Gothic novel.

3. What is Gothic Literature
Generally Combines horror and romance – yes, an odd combination.
Later, the term “Gothic” grew to include any work that attempted to create an atmosphere of terror or the unknown, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories.

4. Writers’ Motivation
Writers like Poe and Hawthorne responded to the optimistic vision of the romantics with a darker vision.
The industrial revolution brought ideas that the "old ways" of doing things are now irrelevant and out of this came the exploration of the supernatural, being at the mercy of forces beyond human control, and the nature of good and evil. It is out of the gothic writers that the contemporary genre of horror springs.

5. Characteristics Overall feeling of darkness
Horror stories or ghost stories
Supernatural - apparitions, phantoms, demons, and necromancers
An atmosphere of brooding gloom

6. Setting
The setting of the Gothic Novel is a character in itself. The plot is usually set in a castle, an abbey, a monastery, or some other, usually religious edifice, and it is acknowledged that this building has secrets of its own. It is this gloomy and frightening scenery, which sets the scene for what the audience should expect.

7. Setting
Includes wild and desolate landscapes, ancient buildings such as ruined monasteries, cathedrals, castles with dungeons, torture chambers, secret doors, and winding stairways

8. Did you ever think of Scooby Doo as Gothic Lit

9. Characters
Characters - youthful, handsome heroes and fainting heroines
Female characters are threatened by powerful or impetuous male figures

10. Archetypes
Virginal maiden
Old fool
Hero
Tyrant
Stupid Servant

11. Archetypes
Virginal Maiden – young, beautiful, pure, innocent, kind, virtuous. Shows these virtues by fainting and crying whenever her delicate sensibilities are challenged, usually starts out with a mysterious past and it is later revealed that she is the daughter of an aristocratic or noble family.

12. Archetypes
The Stupid Servant and Clowns – act as comic relief by asking seemingly stupid questions, transitions between scenes, brings news, messenger, moves plot forward

13. Gothic Art

14. Famous Gothic Authors Mary Shelly and Frankenstein
Edgar Allen Poe and…all his stuff 
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights
Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre

15. Urban Gothic Authors
Robert Louis Stevenson and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray
Bram Stoker and Dracula
Gaston Leroux and The Phantom
of the Opera

16. Uplifting huh?