To what Extent has Gothic Literature Continued or Changed from the 18th Century to Present Day?

According to Fig.1.3 the responses collected by this questionnaire establishes that some people believe that Classical Literature – as in Gothic Literature- appears to not be as popular as 21st century Horror Literature. This was targeted at different audiences of 16 to 45 indicating that it goes against the prejudice that younger generations go for modern texts and older generations go for classical texts.

Fig 1.3

The term ‘Other’ indicates other genres like Sci-Fi, Fantasy etc. being better than both Horror novels and Classical novels with 29% of people believing that they feel it’s an enjoyable read.

The definition of the Horror genre differs completely to the Gothic genre. This idea of how the Gothic novel transformed from various architectures based around impending castles and morality tales, to the idea of monsters, fear, and repugnance. Therefore, it is interesting to notice the change from how the genre has developed from arguably the 17th century to the 20th century, where vampires, werewolf’s, and other monsters are very popular with teen audiences especially.

However, it is arguable that looking at Shelley’s Frankenstein from a modern perspective demonstrates the idea that it is a novel torn between gothic and horror as it is one of the rare novels that demonstrate gothic elements and Horror elements. Therefore, there is some continuity to how fear is presented in Frankenstein & The Woman in Black demonstrating that these two novels are examples of a postmodernist novel and pre-modernist novel, which is very rare.

Although , what determines the roots of the horror genre, the explorations of the gothic genre has already been investigated therefore, to established the difference between the dying genre and the ...

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... a new form of terror literature which mixtures with thrillers, but still provides the same quality and emotions as terror literature has done throughout the decades.

According to figure 1.4 this explores how enjoyable the selected people have enjoyed reading the novels that they have come across. The responses range from ages like 21 to 63 who have read the ins and outs of these books and have come up with their own interpretation about the novels that some consider ‘Classic Gothic Lit’ and others consider not good like the short percentage of people who said that Hill’s The Woman in Black is not an enjoyable read as well as, The Monk. However, the largest percentage that people thought was an enjoyable read was Stoker’s Dracula alongside Shelley’s Frankenstein which are both considered such classic Gothic Literature whether or not people enjoy reading or not.