Gothic novel: Encyclopedia II - Gothic novel - Post-Victorian legacy

Gothic novel - Post-Victorian legacy

By the 1880s, it was time for a revival of the gothic novel as a semi-respectable literary form. This was the period of the gothic works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Machen, and Oscar Wilde, and the most famous gothic villain ever appeared in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Other notable writers included Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, and H.P.Lovecraft. Lovecraft's protégé, Robert Bloch, penned the gothic horror classic, Psycho, which drew on the classic interests of the genre. From these, the gothic genre per se gave way to modern horror fiction, although many literary critics use the term to cover the entire genre, and many modern writers of horror (or indeed other types of fiction) exhibit considerable gothic sensibilities -- examples include the works of Anne Rice, as well as some of the less sensationalist works of Stephen King.

The themes of the gothic novel have had inumerable children. It created the modern horror film, one of the most popular of all cinematic genres seen in films. While few classical composers drew on gothic works, Twentifth century popular music drew on it strongly eventually resulting in gothic rock and the dark goth subculture surrounding it. Themes from gothic writers such as H.P. Lovecraft were also used amongst heavy metal bands especialy in black metal, death metal and gothic metal. The gothic tradition has also expanded its boundaries to as well to the new media forms of the internet.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Post-Victorian legacy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki