Gothic Novels

1. Gothic Novels Teaching Frankenstein Mrs. Lindell

2. Gothic Elements • Setting in/near a castle • Atmosphere of mystery/suspense • Ancient Prophecy with castle or inhabitants • Omens, Portents, visions • Supernatural • High, even overwrought emotion • Women in distress • Women threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male • Metonymy of gloom and horror • Vocabulary of the gothic

3. Gothic Novel • Invented almost single-handedly by Horace Walpole, whose The Castle of Otranto (1764) contains essentially all the elements that constitute the genre. Walpole's novel was imitated not only in the 18th century and not only in the novel form, but it has also influenced writing, poetry, and even film making up to the present day.

4. Creating a mood through vocab

5. Elements of romance • Powerful love • Uncertainty of reciprocation • Unreturned love • Tension between true love and father’s control • Lovers parted • Illicit love or lust threatens the virtuous one • Rival lovers or multiple suitors

6. As J. A. Cuddon suggests, the conventions of gothic literature include: • wild and desolate landscapes, • ancient buildings such as ruined monasteries; cathedrals; castles with dungeons, torture chambers, • secret doors, and winding stairways; • apparitions, phantoms, demons, and necromancers; • an atmosphere of brooding gloom; • and youthful, handsome heroes and fainting (or screaming!) heroines who face off against corrupt aristocrats, • wicked witches, • and hideous monsters. • Conventionally, female characters are threatened by powerful or impetuous male figures, … presenting details designed to evoke horror, disgust, or terror

7. The words Goth and Gothic also described the Germanic tribes which sacked Rome and also ravaged the rest of Europe in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. From this source, the words came also to mean barbarian, barbarous, and barbaric. By the eighteenth century in England, Gothic had become synonymous with the Middle Ages, a period which was in disfavor because it was perceived as chaotic, unenlightened, and superstitious.

8. Mary Shelley • Born in 1797 • Listened to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” when she was nine. • Lord Byron purposed a competition for write a ghost story • The term galvanism sparked an idea (no pun intended) • Frankenstein published 1818

11. Metonymy • A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated (such as "crown" for "royalty"). Metonymy is also the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it, such as describing someone's clothing to characterize the individual.

12. metonymy - me-ton'-y-my from meta, "change" and onoma, "name" • Reference to something or someone by naming one of its attributes.  • Examples  The pen is mightier than the swordThe pen is an attribute of thoughts that are written with a pen; the sword is an attribute of military action • We await word from the crown. • I'm told he's gone so far as to giver her a diamond ring • The IRS is auditing me? Great. All I need is a couple of suits arriving at my door.