The term 'gothic' was originally used to describe both type of Art and Architecture. Gothic novels were given a genre of their own primarily because of their emotional extremes and their dark themes

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Homework                                               Thursday 15th September 2005

Gothic Literature

The gothic novel is a literary genre which is said to have been created in 1764 when Horace Walpole wrote his novel ‘The Castle of Otranto’. The main features of gothic novels included terror, mystery, the supernatural, doom, death, curses and madness.

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The term ‘gothic’ was originally used to describe both type of Art and Architecture. Gothic novels were given a genre of their own primarily because of their emotional extremes and their dark themes and because it’s most natural settings were things like castles and monasteries which were part of the typical gothic architecture. Some of the first gothic novels included ‘The Castle of Otranto’ and ‘Byronic Hero’.

By about 1840, the gothic genre had played itself out and this was partly due to writers who were developing the genre into the horror fiction that it later morphed ...

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