English Literature / Unit 11 ENL 1030 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Gothic Novel Begins
Captions available
The idea
Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, of seventeen sixty-four, is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel; its second edition was subtitled A Gothic Story. Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis followed, and the Gothic sought extreme emotion, terror and the sublime, which Edmund Burke had theorized.
In practice
A haunted castle; fear and awe.
Where people slip
Gothic delight in fear rejects Augustan clarity.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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