The gothic novel

THE GOTHIC NOVEL:


Horace Walpole invented the gothic novel, the first gothic novel is "El castillo de Otranto" it was written in the 1765.



The basic elements of horror are: blood, deaths, doors suddenly slamming shut, defective lights, sound of footsteps approavhing, clanking chains, crazed laughter, rain, especially howling, clanking chains.
Dracula: vampires, perversity and Victorian anxieties.

• The very concept of vampirism horrifies and fascinates in seemingly equal measure, and much of this perverse duality stems from the most famous vampire novel of them all - Bram Stoker's Dracula, first published in 1897.

• Dracula’s forays into London, for example, and his ability to move unnoticed through the crowded streets while carrying the potential to afflict all in his path with the stain of vampirism, play upon late-Victorian fears of untrammelled immigration.

• The act of vampirism itself, with its notion of tainted blood, suggests the fear of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and, more generally, the fear of physical and moral decay that was believed by many commentators to be afflicting society.

• All women, though, are seemingly at risk: as the Count suggests when he pointedly taunts Professor Van Helsing and his followers by saying ‘Your girls that you all love are mine already’ (ch. 23).

• Bram Stoker includes numerous references to the very latest ideas and inventions in his novel. Dr Seward keeps his diary using a phonograph which was a relatively new and expensive piece of technology in 1897.