"The gothic presents characters either haunted by a dark past or desperate to bring some light into their past. He is very responsible and only uses his power to protect the weak. Moreover, the hero can never lie or betray but embodies the truth. These qualities are thought to be innate and even unexperienced heroes do have them. James Fordyce described this character with words like 'noble' or 'sincere'. To support that picture, key words associated with 'knightly' and 'heroic' are used in literature. The image of the 'Gothic Hero' is that of a chivalric knight. The ghost story's commercial aspect provides a further link with the Gothic, which has always been characterised by its wide popular appeal." By then, the transformations of the Gothic into new media such as film and radio were well established. In terms of subject matter, there is an extensive overlap between the two indeed it could be argued that the most characteristic form taken by the Gothic from, perhaps, 1830 to 1930 is the ghost story. Themes such as these are common both to the generically narrower form of the ghost story, and to the wider concept of the Gothic. The source of terror may intrude into the familiar in the form of the past and the dead or the untamed world of nature, or from the human mind, as dreams do (Banquo's 'cursed thoughts which nature gives way to in repose'), or it may come from the rational world itself in the form of a scientific aberration it may even come from such characteristically human ambitions and activities as war, oppression, persecution, which the twentieth century has made peculiarly its own. "Ghost stories have multiple meanings, but one constant element is the challenge they offer to the rational order and the observed laws of nature, though they may do so in a variety of ways, reintroducing what is perceived as fearful, alien, excluded or dangerously marginal. Through different times the focus of ghost stories changed as for example during the new technological inventions during the 20th century possesed machinery was a new field of ghost stories. Examples for ghost stories are "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe or "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King. Ghost stories are defined as tales in which the spirits of the dead encounter the living. Necrophiliac desire for the dead woman (Heathcliff's digging of Catherine's grave) also points to other kinds of transgressions, such as incest. Elizabeth Bronfen's book Over her Dead Body suggests that Gothic writing itself may be an act of killing off the female as it transmits the animate body into inanimate text. Poe said that the death of a beautiful woman is "the most poetical topic in the world". There is also a Gothic obsession with the bodies of dead women. Reading about death serves as a reminder of one's mortality. The corporeality of the body is emphasized with gory descriptions of blood and grave worms. We don't really get sentimental scenes like the death of little William in East Lynne rather, the more gruesome, inexplicable aspects of death are explored. The Gothic is interested in what has been glossed over. It is what is unknown, and poses a threat to the Victorian mind which desires order. Likewise, the subject of death itself has often been ignored or repressed. These kinds of spectres can also be seen as manifestations of the return of the repressed. There is also the trope of the dead who return, as in Poe's Ligeia. The vampire hunters in Dracula have to drive a stake into them, to make sure they are really dead. The vampires who are undead occupy a liminal space they are at once both alive and dead. This thwarts the human wish for certainty. In Gothic literature, death is horrific because it is often not quite the end. If Gothic literature reflects a wish to overcome one's mortality, there is also a fear of those who somehow manage to transcend it, as in the case of vampires and Frankenstein's monster. Death in Gothic literature is associated with the supernatural. Frankenstein), all of which contribute to an atmosphere of horror. #Definition of gothic literature series#Gothic literature is obsessed with death, presenting constant portents of death, unnatural deaths, and series of deaths (e.g.
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