Prof. Derek P. Royal
ENG 351 – The American Novel before WW I
Gothic Narrative
The Gothic
In architecture, Gothic is a term applied to the style that succeeded the Romanesque in Western
Europe, flourishing from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. Its characteristics include the high
pointed arch and vault (suggesting depth and recess), vertical effects (suggesting aspiration),
stained windows (connected to mystery), slender spires, flying buttresses, intricate traceries, and
a wealth and variety of detail. In terms of literature, the designation was used by eighteenth-
century neoclassicists as synonymous with “barbaric.” The romantics of the next generation put
a more positive spin on the Gothic. To them it suggested the natural, primitive, wild, free,
authentic, romantic side of existence.
Gothic fiction is characterized by magic, mystery, and chivalry. It includes a brooding
atmosphere of gloom, one that is housed not only in the physical setting, but in the psychological
state of mind of its characters as well. The physical setting usually betrays “gothic”
characteristics as well, with action taking place in castles, mansions, and monasteries that are
often remote, crumbling, and/or ruined. These structures are usually furnished with an
abundance of dungeons, sliding panels, and subterranean passages. Events are often uncanny,
cruel, or melodramatically violent. A typical gothic story would involve an innocent heroine
falling prey to a lustful villain, and in the mix there are usually ghosts, mysterious events or
disappearances, and other examples of sensational and supernatural occurrences. Most formulaic
gothic novels would evoke terror through the exploitation of what its audiences would
commonly accept as horrific. By emphasizing the irrational or perverse side of existence, gothic
writers suggest that there is more going on underneath the seeming ordered surface of reality—
that unnatural impulses and nightmarish terrors are what really underlie “civilization.”
The roots of the Gothic novel—or the Gothic romance, as it is sometimes called—are usually
traced to Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764), which is seen by most critics as
inaugurating the genre. Other 18th-century examples include William Beckford’s Vathek, an
Arabian Tale (1786), Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and Matthew Gregory
Lewis’s The Monk (1796). American practitioners of Gothic narrative include Charles Brockden
Brown, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Henry James, and in the
twentieth-century, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote, and Stephen King.
