The Horror ! The H orror !What Hath G oth W rought ?

1. The Horror! TheHorror!What Hath Goth Wrought? Characteristics and Origins of theGothic Literature/Horror Genre

2. Horror or just Gore? • Before the days of Freddie Kruger, Hollywood made many suspense/horror movies, some cheapie thrillers (I Dismember Mama), and some that became classics for chilling the blood of the audience. The master of these movie-makers was Alfred Hitchcock, who built suspense slowly and subtly, usually without blood or overt violence. The original Psycho was a masterpiece of subtle horror as were Rear Window and The Birds.

3. Horror or just Gore? • Today’s master of the horror novel is Stephen King, whose books (often made into movies) are true spine-chillers that use suspense to terrify readers. • Did you know that before horror there was Gothic Literature, part of the Romantic Movement?

4. Romantic Roots • Imagination, intuition, and feelings (versus reason and intellect) • Spirituality (versus science) • Innocence (versus experience) • Nature and the country (versus industrialization and the city) • Nostalgia (versus “progress”)

5. Romantic Roots In America, Romanticism most strongly impacted literature. Writers explored supernatural and gothic themes.

6. Romantic Roots • Yesterday and today: Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764); Anne Radcliffe, Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King; Freddy, Jason, Mike, et al.

7. What’s so great about fear anyway? • Do you feel moments of terror? Do you hold your breath? Do you laugh? Why do you react as you do? • How do you explain the desire of people to be terrified? • As children, we delight in ghost stories told in the dark. As adults, we read books or see movies that we know will scare us. Why?

8. Elements of Horror Setting

9. a deserted (or sparsely inhabited) castle or mansion in a state or ruins or semi-ruins • labyrinths/mazes, dark corridors, and winding stairs filled with dusty cobwebs • castles or mansions which have hidden tunnels/staircases, dungeons, underground passages, crypts, or catacombs. • Edgar Allen Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

10. if set in a broken down modern house, the basement or attic becomes the place of terror • threatening natural landscapes, like rugged mountains, dark forests, or eerie moors, exhibiting stormy weather • Shelly’s “Frankenstein”, Sherlock Homes’ “Hounds of the Baskervilles.”

11. Cemetery • A place for the burial of the dead. • Caves, temples, mounds, catacombs, churchyards, crypts. • Crosses cultures and ages.

12. Entrapment/Imprisonment • Being confined or trapped, as shackled to a floor or hidden away in a dark cell. • Heightens the psychology of feeling there’s “no way out.” • Poe’s “Usher” in which Madeline awakens having been buried alive.

13. Elements of Horror Lighting/Mood

14. Blackout • limited lighting such as moonlight (usually a full moon), candles, flashlight, lantern • often the light disappears: clouds hide the moon, candles go out, flashlights/ lanterns are dropped and broken • if electric lights exist, they usually mysteriously go out

15. Mist/Fog A grouping of water particles due to a change in atmospheric conditions. Literary convention used to obscure objects, reduce visibility, or preclude the insertion of something terrifying.

16. Characters

17. Unreliable Narrator • The narrator’s ability to accurately relate events is suspect. • The narrator makes incorrect assumptions or conclusions, or misunderstands situations or other characters. • Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart or James’ Turn of the Screw.

18. Devil • A spirit of incarnate evil. • Latin: diabolus. • Ranges from tragic villain-hero (Milton’s Paradise Lost) to punisher of sinners (Lewis’ The Monk) to tempter and deceiver (Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus) to pure evil.

19. Villain-Hero • The villain poses as a hero at the beginning of the story, or… • The villain possesses enough heroic qualities (charisma, sympathetic past) so that either the reader and/or the other characters see the V-H as more than a charlatan or bad guy. • Milton’s Satan; Prometheus.

20. The Pursued Protagonist • A force that relentlessly, terminally and unavoidably pursues, persecutes or chastizes another for some real or imagined wrong. • A crime and retribution cycle, but also… • A hero-villain can be both the pursued and the pursuer (Shelley’s Frankenstein, Stoker’s Dracula).

21. The Pursued Heroine • A virtuous, idealistic, and usually poetic young woman is pursued by a wicked, older, potent aristocrat. • The pursuit threatens the young lady’s morals and ideals (and often her virginity). • She usually responds with passive courage.

22. Ghosts, Werewolves, Vampires, Witches • Assorted supernatural (usually malignant) beings, bogies, and baddies.

23. Doppelganger • German: doublegoer. • Ghostly counterpart of another person. • Body double, alter ego, identical other person. • Bloch’s Psycho, Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

24. Other Elements

25. Ancestral Curse • The current generation suffers for evil deeds of ancestors. • Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables.

26. Body-Snatching • Grave-Robbing. • Stealing corpses from graves, tombs, or morgues. • Illicit trade in cadavers. • Violation of religious space. • Commercially motivated by science. • King’s Pet Semetary.

27. Claustrophobia • Abnormal dread of being confined in a close, narrow space. • Small, dark, windowless spaces.

28. Gothic Counterfeit • Playful fakery of authenticity. • The text is presented as a discovery or recovery by the editor, sometimes of an ancient or forgotten text. • Cloaks the real writer’s authorship. • Complicates the point of view (making things more fun and intriguing).

29. Dreaming/Nightmares • Dredge up strong emotions, such as ecstasy, terror, joy. • Reveal urges, impulses, desires, even truths about oneself one tries to hide. • Reveal the future; premonitions.

30. Gothic Gadgets • Physical elements allowing supernatural powers to display uncanny presence and abilities. • “Supernatural props”: vocal and mobile portraits; animated statues and skeletons; doors, gates, portals, hatchways which open and close independently; secret passageways; secret messages and manuscripts; forbidden chambers and sealed compartments; casket lids seen to rise, etc.

31. The Grotesque • Mutations, often deformities. • The flowers in Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter”; the jester in Poe’s “Hop-Frog”. • A mix of two separate modes, such as comedy and tragedy, creating a disturbing fiction, in which comic circumstances often preclude horrific tragedy and vice-versa.

32. Necromancy • The dark art of communicating with the dead. • Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus.

33. Revenant • The return of the dead upon the living. • A ghostly being who returns to life. • Wilke Collins’ “The Dream Woman”.

34. Revenge • The act of repaying someone for a harm caused. • Revenge can be enacted upon a loved one, a family member, a friend, an object or area. • Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado”.

35. Somnambulism • Sleepwalking • Hidden sources of stress may be revealed or acts of guilt replayed.

36. Transformation/Metamorphosis • A striking change in appearance; a change in the form or function of an organism by a natural or unnatural process. • Poe’s “Morella” and “Ligeia”; HG Wells’ Dr. Moreau, Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde, King’s It.

37. Your Task • Create an original horror story • 2-3 pages in length. • must include dialogue, characterization, theme, and suspense, BUT no gore. • This is not an experiment in how much bloody violence you can write about. It is a piece about fear, suspense, and terror—not blood and guts.

38. Elements of a Short Story • http://www.flocabulary.com/fivethings/ • Listen to and follow along with the song about the five major elements of a story. A copy of this song has been given to you for your information.

39. Acknowledgement Material in this powerpoint is a combination of two on-line PowerPoints as well as my own insertions. • Presentation created by Paul Reiff of the English Department at Vernon Hills High School, District 128, Illinois. • Most material gathered from “A Glossary of Literary Gothic Terms” on the web at www2.gasou.edu/facstaff/dougt/goth. • Site maintained by Douglas H. Thomson of the Department of Literature and Philosophy at Georgia Southern University. • Presentation found at http://www.etsu.edu/coe/uschool/faculty/borthwik/honors/documents/The_Horror_Story_Unit.ppt.