Unit II Gothic Literature

Unit II Gothic Literature

The Scarlet Letter

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Frankenstein

Dracula

The Tell-Tale Heart

Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is considered a masterpiece of American literature and a classic moral study.

The novel also crafts intriguing symmetries between social oppression and psychological repression.

Encapsulates the emergence of individualism and self-reliance from America’s Puritan and conformist roots.

Written by

Washington Irving

It's among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring popularity, especially during the Halloween season.

Headless horsemen were staples of Northern Europe storytelling, featuring in German, Irish, Scandinavian, and British legends.

Usually viewed as omens of ill-fortune for those who chose to disregard their apparitions.

Irving's story helped to develop a unique sense of American cultural and existential selfhood during the early 19th century.

Written by Mary Shelley’s

Frankenstein is a unique novel in the canon of English literature.

Shelley presents a unique character in Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the monster.

The novel has had a considerable influence on literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays.

Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, Brian Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story.

Written by

Bram Stoker

Is an epistolary novel, meaning that is composed from letters, journal and diary entries, telegrams, and newspaper clippings.

The novel is meant to have a slightly journalistic feel, as it is a

harrowing account supposedly written by the people who witnessed the book's events.

As a Gothic romantic horror novel, a critical theme in Dracula is good against evil.

Some critics argue that the novel is about the relationship between the past and the future

Written by Edgar Allan Poe

This story shows the narrator's attempt to rationalize his irrational behavior.

Even though this is one of Poe's shortest stories, it is nevertheless a profound and ambiguous investigation of a man's paranoia.

Poe has given us one of the most powerful examples of the capacity of the human mind to deceive itself and then to speculate on the nature of its own destruction.