The Development of the Gothic Genre of Literature over the Last 200 years

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Tim Edwins 10T                02/05/07

The Development of the Gothic Genre of Literature over the Last 200 years

Gothic Literature has developed in some ways a lot over the last two hundred years, but in other ways, not much of it has changed.  The things that have mainly stayed the same over the years are the inclusion of monologues in gothic novels.  Most gothic novels to date have in them at least a couple of monologues.  Another element is mystery.  Gothic novels have maybe a murder case or in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ there is the idea of body switching, where Jekyll is Hyde and vice-versa.

Things that have changed in one way or another over the last two hundred years are the sentence length.  Edgar Allan Poe used short, snappy sentences that were just what the character was thinking.  Sometimes he would even break a sentence with a chain of thoughts, then return to the sentence and finish it.  Whereas authors such as R. L. Stevenson and Angela Carter used what we refer to as normal sentence length, and irregular patterns of paragraph length.  An example of this is in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, (R. L. Stevenson), there is a paragraph that is one page long.

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The name gothic initially came from a style of architecture that dates as far back as medieval times.  The menacing looks of gothic architecture make it well known.  An example of gothic architecture is shown in many arches, as arches from the gothic period are known for their pointed peak.

In the middle of the eighteenth century the word gothic had a totally new meaning.  Gothic was used to depict a type of literature, which as before, always has a sense of immorality and evil about it.  In this day and age, gothic still has the same meaning, ...

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