Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpoles novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the gothic revivalists rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere.The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creationsthus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. In literature such Anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, dragons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.Contentshide 1 Parody 2 The Female Gothic 3 The Romantics 4 Victorian Gothic 5 Post-Victorian legacy 6 Prominent examples o 6.1 Gothic satire 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External linksedit ParodyThe excesses, stereotypes, and frequent absurdities of the traditional Gothic made it rich territory for satire (Skarda 1986). The most famous parody of the Gothic is Jane Austens novel Northanger Abbey (1818) in which the naive protagonist, after reading too much Gothic fiction, conceives herself a heroine of a Radcliffian romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side, though the truth turns out to be much more prosaic. Jane Austens novel is valuable for including a list of early Gothic works since known as the Northanger Horrid Novels: The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest (1794) by Ludwig Flammenberg (pseudonym for Carl Friedrich Kahlert; translated by Peter Teuthold) Horrid Mysteries (1796) by the Marquis de Grosse (translated by P. Will) The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) by Eliza Parsons The Mysterious Warning, a German Tale (1796) by Eliza Parsons Clermont (1798) by Regina Maria Roche The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) by Eleanor Sleath The Midnight Bell (1798) by Francis LathomThese books, with their lurid titles, were once thought to be the creations of Jane Austens imagination, though later research by Michael Sadleir and Montague Summers confirmed that they did actually exist and stimulated renewed interest in the Gothic. They are currently all being reprinted by Valancourt Press (Wright 2007: 29-32).Another example of Gothic parody in a similar vein is The Heroine by Eaton Stannard Barrett (1813). Cherry Wilkinson, a fatuous female protagonist with a history of novel-reading, fancies herself as the heroine of a Gothic romance. She perceives and models reality according to the stereotypes and typical plot structures of the Gothic novel, leading to a series of absurd events culminating in catastrophe. After her downfall, her affectations and excessive imaginations become eventually subdued by the voice of reason in the form of Stuart, a paternal figure, under whose guidance the protagonist receives a sound education and correction of her misguided taste (Skarda 1986).edit The Female GothicCharacterized by its castles, dungeons, gloomy forests and hidden passages, from the Gothic novel genre emerged the Female Gothic. Guided by the works of authors such as Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley and Charlotte Bront, the Female Gothic permitted the introduction of feminine societal and sexual desires into Gothic texts. The Medieval society in which Gothic texts are based, granted women writers the opportunity to attribute “features of the mode of Gothicism as the result of the suppression of female sexuality, or else