About the Gothic Novel

Literature and the Supernatural

The life of the gothic novel, as the design purist, was short and aesthetic result of the reaction given in cultured circles of Europe against Rationalism. Born in 1765 with the publication of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, and would die in 1815, following the publication of his latest work: Melmoth, the Wanderer, Charles Maturin. On this view the Gothic novel is inseparable from certain elements of atmosphere: dark landscapes, dark forests, medieval ruins and castles with their respective basements, vaults and passageways well populated with ghosts, night noises, chains, skeletons, demons ... His greatest representative is Ann Radcliffe.

But many we give a different definition, so it can fit not only physically stories that happen in basements and vaults of the castle, but, mainly, those that take place in darkest passages and vaults of our own mind. Thus, a Gothic novel may or may not supernatural elements, it can happen
in the passageways of a medieval castle or at least dark corridors of a spaceship could be written in the eighteenth century, in the seventeenth century or the century.

The writer does not employ the traditional elements of the gothic genre to produce a technical and mathematical about certain effects, but on the contrary, those born naturally after immersion in his own subconscious and as metaphors for it. That is, the Gothic novel is constructed based on symbols spontaneously living in the depths of our minds, just as happens in dreams. Thus, the darkness is a product of our own darkness: feelings of loneliness, fear, disgust at what surrounds us and underground passageways multiple recesses of our brain, the uncertainty about the path to take, the characters fascinating, those who seek in nothing in reality or those who, in whole or in part, would like to be.

The writer, today or two thousand years ago, lives wrapped in a host of doubts and mysteries eager to respond. At first the questions deal about everyday (the why of human behavior). When you have found the answers or lack thereof verified there is a sense of alienation, denial and rejection of membership
the human species. The only way not to perish in the most painful loneliness is the belief that there is another world dominated by men, an afterlife. The fact that its manifestation in the literature usually correspond with vampires, ghosts and the devil is just a demonstration of belief in the existence of a better world if there is a devil, there is also God and all that goodness and beauty that is is involved. The modern substitute for the devil by aliens does not affect this statement, an evil monster like Alien is just confirmation of the existence of other worlds and, therefore, of other cultures and allegedly superior beings better than acquaintances.

The writer is immersed in the supernatural world to be saved by superior beings and circumstances that have nothing to do with their sad environment.

To illustrate this I will put here the example of a contemporary writer:
Anne Rice.

The youth of Anne Rice (1941) was not a bed of roses: In college was a lonely child, and never in his childhood he had felt the love he needed. He lost his mother, an alcoholic, at age fourteen, his father, uncaring, remarried less than two years later, forcing Anne to move with them to Texas. In 1972 his daughter died, six
years, a victim of leukemia. The following year, resulting in pain and in an attempt to perpetuate his daughter under the guise of a vampire child (see Prism of the Night, by Katherine Ramsland biography) was born Interview with the Vampire (written in 1973 and rejected for publication in several publishers until 1976). Anne Rice says: "Writers write about what obsesses them. I lost my mother when I was fourteen. My daughter died at the age of six. I lost my Catholic faith. When I write the darkness is always there. I turn to where the pain "(People, December 5, 1988)

The most beloved character Anne and readers is the vampire Lestat. Anne tells him:

"Lestat. . .
Lestat is difficult to describe. Lestat, somehow, it all
my life, because even when I'm writing about Lestat
looking at the world through their eyes, and Lestat whom I
has become a traveler, who has carried me out of me
and released the same concerns about my limitations, both physical
and spiritual. Lestat is a character created by me.
It is a symbol of some kind of freedom and control. Represents
the cruel side in us, but it's part of my thoughts days
and night. And part of my conversations day and night, I guess. Before
almost everything that I ask myself, what do you think Lestat
this ..., Lestat would react to this? Therefore,
I would say he is my other half, but it is my male half
and cruel, thank God, there except in fiction. "

In the crypt of the human mind have left most glorious works: Hamlet, Faust, La
Divine Comedy Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and countless more. Works very different
each other, but with the common element being a hidden reaction (or not), unconscious (or not) of the author against the environment.

Because of the style characteristics of a type of work that requires full focus and experiential emotional essence of the author (though transmuted beyond recognition), along with the fact that the symbolic elements that appear in it are common to the subconscious of all us, the Gothic novel is characterized by its ability to capture attention and induce the reader deeper concentration, to penetrate your brain and show their own fears and desires.

Chris Baldick, in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales masterfully states: "The structure we can recognize the cellars and crypts of repressed desire, attics and steeples of neurosis, just as Poe accepted the invitation to read" enchanted palace "of the poem as an allegory of the mind of a madman."

The elements supernatural and fantasy are so inherent to mankind that their
first literary works (not to speak of their beliefs) are strictly fantastic.

Can you really see that between The Odyssey and The Lord of the Rings has been more than two thousand years? The narrative form of fantasy has changed a bit, just a little, it has also diversified and at the same time appear different currents, but the motivations and the elements used (roughly)
are identical:

- Motivations for the reader away from your boring world. Items needed for this:

• Unknown environments, from the islands of the Odyssey, the castles of The Mysteries of Udolpho, the center of the earth or the trip to the moon Verne to the future world of Brave New World. Places and times past or no they can not remind us of our present (setting in the Middle Ages during the eighteenth century. In the late twentieth century unknown planets, spaceships, future ages, but also in the past, do not forget the current boom of the historical novel, which is just another way trip maginación responding to the same interests indicated). The more you travel, whether geographical or temporal (past or the future: The Time Machine) perform better.
  Traveling is equal to flee: the problems of the troubles ...
• Fascinating characters: the Ulysses unparalleled cyber-hero of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Through El Cid, Heathcliff or husband and the mysterious housekeeper Rebecca. In the Gothic novel characters always intelligent, intriguing mysteries, conscious of his guilt (the monk), attractive (Wuthering Heights).
• Romanticism: This point does not need examples, right?
• Danger. The romance rarely needed, but never in danger. Better if it comes from the hand of apparently irreducible beings, following the classical Greek tradition.
• Girl in trouble: traditionally to be saved by the hero or the love that he brings with him (the boring life of the humble and diffident protagonist of Rebecca completely changes the know love) and a secondary role. This even in the Gothic "pure" happens in the process of emancipation of women, and whose most important representatives are women.
  Too many years collecting seeds to give ourselves the role of hunting? Fortunately generation "Lara Croft" and "Alien" will see things differently.

What I intend to show is that Gothic literature is a genre that was born and died suddenly at a particular time, but one genus, the supernatural (The Odyssey was not fancy, for believers of the time the gods were real, no fictional characters), which in the eighteenth century fashion makes a very specific elements of setting, which simply replaces another, and that in the future (today) will themselves be replaced by the new trends imposed by the evolution of our story, but basically, the crypt of the monk and the cabin of the ship Nostromus Exactly the same task as well as Frankenstein and Mother and Nexus 6. Fear, fear classics, primal, not a Gothic invention, as some claim.

This our way of escape have been expanded through increased knowledge we have and we can use them without sin naturally as irrational:
characters can be born and live in a spaceship, no problem, but if we detoxify of futuristic fashion so we can make them live with the Crusaders, with the ancient Egyptians and even the Neanderthals. Today there are dozens of novels with these issues, due to the popularity of university courses and accessibility to all types of documentation. And these issues, therefore, are based on the same causes unpremeditated by the Middle Ages it became fashionable in the eighteenth century (the discovery of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii and medieval ruins obsessive led to studies the past that marked the art and thought of an era.
Science, technology and the height of knowledge about the past of mankind are making our own, which, literally (and pictures) simultaneously and paradoxically results
at the height (not at birth, which occurred long ago) of science fiction and historical novels).

Therefore, from the distant perspective that allows us to view the whole story, we see that the so-called classic gothic novel of the eighteenth century merely introduce small variations in the older theme of humanity: the supernatural, and therefore, not born in the eighteenth century (or is that one can conceive of a Gothic scene Charon plunged into the darkness of Styx, with the sound of the dead as a background, and transporting the souls of his boat new dead?) or die, just like energy or dinosaurs, is transformed. Given these principles to refer to a Gothic novel and I mean that, whatever the time it was written, which offers a journey into the human mind using their stripping yet primal fears. There are no supernatural elements in Rebecca, however, the terror of the unknown, to the past, loneliness, a lack of love are constant until the end of the work.

The literary theorists have spent much time in temporary boundaries of the Gothic novel subcategorized (namely, black, pure, high, historical or tame, represented by Walpole and Sophia Lee, differentiated by the lack of explanation to the supernatural; Gothic explained or illusory, whose greatest exponent is Ann Radcliffe, where everything is a rational explanation, Satanic Gothic, represented by Matthew Gregory Lewis, where he explained and the unexplained are mixed and the facts are presented in a rough, without prior acclimatization to terror, continued by Maturin; black realism; philosophical or didactic gothic, gothic parody marginal, and maybe more ...), often limited to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which only Walpole, Radcliffe, Maturin and Lewis highlighted in the list. For others, like I said, the meaning is much broader and includes almost all of the great authors of Western literature.
As this is my belief, it is based on the list of Gothic works which can be accessed by clicking here .
The list, sorted by author, gives access to all free electronic works that I could find. While Spanish fantasy literature has not shone never too enthusiastically (apparently the "intelligentsia" (not the great authors) is considering the second row), some of our greatest talents had the luxury of "wasting time" ( as so determined, it seems) and spend at least short stories or novellas, eg Galdós, Baroja, Azorin, Clarín, Unamuno, Alarcon and Becquer (Ramon y Cajal even!), some of which are included in the list and are available for reading.

Also includes a small list of virtual libraries where you can find free e-books. In some cases the sites are specifically dedicated to the world of horror and science fiction works and other art primarily for large collections of classical authors in general.