ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -How did Gothic literature emerge? Gothic fiction actually emerged as a subgenre of Romanticism which was a reaction to the formal form of the Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement. The Romantics focused on the beauty of nature, subjectivity, individualism, and the sublime.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Gothic, a literary movement that focused on ruin, decay, death, terror, and chaos, and privileged irrationality and passion over rationality and reason, grew in response to the historical, sociological, psychological, and political contexts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Detailed explanation-3: -Gothic fiction as a genre was first established with the publication of Horace Walpole’s dark, foreboding The Castle of Otranto in 1764. In the centuries since, gothic fiction has not only flourished, but also branched off into many popular subgenres.

Detailed explanation-4: -The changing landscape, brought about by the Industrial and agricultural revolutions with the expansion of the city and depopulation of the countryside, was another influence on the growth of the Romantic movement in Britain.