Sunday, November 20, 2011

Gothic Novels

Out of the novels that we have read so far, The Castle of Otranto has been my favorite, and I've been very curious about this genre of novel for a while now. As stated on the back of the book, it is regarded as one of the founding novels of Gothic fiction. Walpole set the stage for novels such as Dracula, Carmilla, and The Blood of the Vampire. If you've read any of these novels, you'll know that they each have the same supernatural feel to them as The Castle of Otranto has. My question is: what function did Gothic fiction have? Why do you think Walpole wrote a novel such as The Castle of Otranto?

6 comments:

  1. This is just a thought... I think Walpole wrote a Gothic novel with a kind of supernatural feel to create bizarre characters like Manfred. So far, the books we've read had the "ideal gentleman" or the "seemingly" gentleman-like characters... And to make the The Castle of Otranto acceptable and readable to society... he might have had to make the setting as bizarre as the characters. Then people won't call him out on characters like Manfred. Clearly he breaks all the desired Virtues.

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  2. I think that Gothic Fiction is a genre that appeals to a variety of the reader's senses. It combines elements of horror and romance; two genres that have always been favored by readers. My opinion, however, is a little different from Christina's in that I think that the "supernatural" aspect of these novels is created by the characters, and not vise versa. I think that the "feel" or "mood" of the genre is a product of its elements; setting is one of the most important of these elements. If anything, I would say that the characters are a product of the setting, which brings a sense of history and haunting to the psyche of the characters. I think Walpole was smart to be the initiator of this genre, as it had much success in both the eighteenth and nineteenth century; perhaps he wrote it out of a connection he found between the two genres, as they seem to fit together into a sort of hybrid.

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  3. I think the Gothic novels are so appealing because they evoke so many different emotions from the readers. The readers want to feel passion or fear - something different than they felt reading previous novels. The characters in these novels are, like what Dayna said, almost supernatural. The characters are almost odd, but by classifying the novel as being Gothic gives the readers reassurance that its okay.

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  4. I think the Gothic novel served, in a sense, as an outlet for a lot of the repressed emotions and behaviors prevalent in the eighteenth century. Obviously, there were many authors, some of whom we've read so far this semester, who wrote outside of typical societal expectations, but, like Gina said earlier, the Gothic allowed for that much more rebellion, all while remaining safe within the guise of fiction. Authors like Walpole who began the genre set up a perfect opportunity for later authors to employ creative license in creating creepy, scandalous, demented, and terrifying scenes, characters, and situations. These novels were often sensuous, and in many ways heretical. The novels succeeded because they fit securely within a genre that made those actions and thoughts acceptable, allowing readers and authors alike to act out and vicarious live the extremes of which they could not partake in reality.

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  5. I haven't read any of the other novels, so I have no idea if this is going in the right direction or not, but, as I have started to read Vathek, which is the only other gothic novel I have to compare Otranto to, it seems like the gothic novel was the 18C science fiction novel. I think it sort of filled the gaping hole between moral fiction and reality. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of "imagination" (sorry 18C, please prove me wrong) in many of the books written at the time. With the introduction of the gothic novel, it filled in this hole. I also think that it helped to satiate curiosity at the time. While it is great to read realistic fiction and moral stuff, yada yada, I do love to pick up Harry Potter during the summer and hermit myself up until I'm done. I'm not necessarily learning anything, per se, from reading them, but merely getting sheer entertainment out of it.

    Sometimes it is fun to think about things that are completely impossible and write a story. You don't have to follow anyone's rules or even a plot line for that matter because at the end of the day, technically nothing you are writing about is even remotely plausible. Sort of the frontier page turner of the time.

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  6. I don't have much experience with Gothic novels, but I agree with Samantha. I think that Gothic novels (and the genre) are great ways to explore the places between reality and fiction. It's easy for Gothic novels to be interesting because they are based in some sort of reality. Walpole, for instance, took the romantic mansion and demented it. He paved the way for authors like Edgar Allan Poe who can make even the sound of a heart beat frightening. The Gothic novel, I think, was a way to step outside the guidebooks we have been reading and truly explore human emotion and experience.

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