ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Usually the setting consists of a castle or manor in an isolated location, away from any city or civilization. This genre is dark, eerie, and mysterious, often containing elements of terror, horror, and the macabre and the bizarre. Common themes and motifs of the Gothic include power, confinement, and isolation.

Detailed explanation-2: -Authors often used settings like dark forests, unnerving mountain regions, ominous climatic conditions, and threatening storms. Castles, romanticized in the Medieval period, played a large role in early Gothic writings.

Detailed explanation-3: -The goal of the dark and mysterious setting is to create a sense of unease and foreboding, contributing toward the atmospheric element of fear and dread. Darkness also allows those sudden and frightening appearances of people, animals, ghosts, apparent ghosts, or monsters.

Detailed explanation-4: -Characteristics of the Gothic include: death and decay, haunted homes/castles, family curses, madness, powerful love/romance, ghosts, and vampires. The genre is said to have become popular in the late 18th century with the publication of Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764.