Gothic Elements In Gothic Literature

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Recommended: An analytical note on gothic fiction

In the late 18th century/early 19th century, gothic literature was introduced to England and quickly migrated to the United States. It falls under the classification of romantic literature, where hope in the feelings, senses, and imagination were enhanced. Gothic literature is more dark and tragic than other romantic works of the period and influenced many stories of the time including, but not limited to, Dracula by Bram Stoker, Frankenstein by Claire Bampton and Mary Shelley, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Gothic literature is a genre that combines literature, horror, death and romanticism. The detailed descriptions put into introducing the characters and the environment around them can help the reader relate to any story. Gothic literature enhances the characters and deepens the story in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe was a “master of the literary genre known as the Gothic story.” (Pang, Wang, Hu) He is best known for his dark, gruesome depictions of emotionally haunted characters and their “horror towards super nature, nothingness, death, evil and disintegration of personality.” A few of Poe’s most famous stories are “The Cask …show more content…

Poe uses many more descriptive details to describe the setting, environment, and atmosphere of this story. “I know not how I was-but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”. (Poe 654) Describing the setting as a dark and gloomy place helps bring the story alive because it infers the atmosphere was once dynamic and is now in the final stages of death, much like the two main

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