Editing Gothic fiction (section)

==Characteristics==
[[File:The Bride of Lammermoor - Wolf's Crag.jpg|thumb|right|The ruins of Wolf's Crag castle in [[Walter Scott]]'s ''[[The Bride of Lammermoor]]'' (1819)]]
Gothic fiction is characterised by an environment of fear, the threat of [[supernatural]] events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present.<ref name="Birch">{{Cite encyclopedia |year=2009 |title=Gothic fiction |encyclopedia=The Oxford Companion to English Literature |publisher=Oxford University Press |editor-last=Birch |editor-first=Dinah |edition=7th |isbn=9780191735066}}</ref><ref name="Hogle">{{Cite book |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9780511999185/type/book |title=The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction |date=2002-08-29 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-79124-3 |editor-last=Hogle |editor-first=Jerrold E. |edition=1 |pages=1–20 |chapter=Introduction |series=Cambridge Companions to Literature |doi=10.1017/ccol0521791243}}</ref> The setting typically includes physical reminders of the past, especially through ruined buildings that stand as proof of a previously thriving world that is now decaying.<ref name="De Vore setting">{{Cite web |last=De Vore |first=David |title=The Gothic Novel |url=http://cai.ucdavis.edu/waters-sites/gothicnovel/155breport.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110313142647/http://cai.ucdavis.edu/waters-sites/gothicnovel/155breport.html |archive-date=2011-03-13|quote="The setting is greatly influential in Gothic novels. It not only evokes the atmosphere of horror and dread, but also portrays the deterioration of its world. The decaying, ruined scenery implies that at one time there was a thriving world. At one time the abbey, castle, or landscape was something treasured and appreciated. Now, all that lasts is the decaying shell of a once thriving dwelling."}}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=March 2025}} Characteristic gothic settings in the 18th and 19th centuries include castles, and religious buildings such as [[Monastery|monasteries]], [[convent]]s, and [[crypt]]s. The atmosphere is typically [[Claustrophobia|claustrophobic]], and common plot elements include vengeful persecution, imprisonment, and murder.<ref name="Birch" /> The depiction of horrifying events in Gothic fiction often serves as a metaphorical expression of psychological or social conflicts.<ref name="Hogle" /> The form of a Gothic story is usually discontinuous and convoluted, often incorporating tales within tales, changing narrators, and framing devices such as discovered manuscripts or interpolated histories.<ref name="Kosofsky Sedgwick">{{Cite web|author=Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve|author-link=Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick|url=https://readingemilydickinson.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/1/3/29138015/coherence_of_gothic_conventions_with_annotations.pdf|title=The Coherence of Gothic Conventions|publisher=Methuen |date=1980|access-date=July 25, 2022}}</ref> Other characteristics, regardless of relevance to the main plot, can include sleeplike and deathlike states, [[live burial]]s, [[Gothic double|doubles]], unnatural echoes or silences, the discovery of obscured family ties, unintelligible writings, nocturnal landscapes, remote locations,<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |title=The Sherlock Holmes Book |publisher=[[DK (publisher)|DK]] |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-4654-3849-2 |editor-last=Davies |editor-first=David Stuart |editor-link=David Stuart Davies |edition=First American |location=New York |pages=99–100 |editor-last2=Forshaw |editor-first2=Barry |editor-link2=Barry Forshaw}}</ref> and dreams.<ref name="Kosofsky Sedgwick" /> In the late 19th century, Gothic fiction often involved [[demon]]s and [[demonic possession]], [[ghost]]s, and other kinds of evil [[Spirit (supernatural entity)|spirits]].<ref name=":0" />

===Role of architecture===
[[File:Strawberryhill.jpg|thumb|right|[[Strawberry Hill House|Strawberry Hill]], southwest London, an English villa in the "[[Gothic Revival architecture|Gothic Revival]]" style, built by Gothic writer [[Horace Walpole]]]]
[[File:Stowe Park, Buckinghamshire (4663843163).jpg|thumb|The [[Stowe Gardens#The Gothic Temple|Gothic Temple]] folly in [[Stowe Gardens]], [[Buckinghamshire]], built as a ruin in 1741, designed by [[James Gibbs]]<ref>{{cite book|last1=Luckhurst|first1=Roger|title=GOTHIC An Illustrated History|date=2021|publisher=Thames & Hudson|isbn=978-0-500-25251-2|page=25|url=|language=en}}</ref>]]
Gothic fiction is strongly associated with the [[Gothic Revival architecture]] of that same era. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, marked by harsh laws enforced by [[torture]] and with mysterious, fantastic, and [[superstitious]] [[rituals]]. The literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the [[Sublime (philosophy)|sublime]], and a quest for atmosphere, similar to the Gothic Revivalists' rejection of the clarity and [[rationalism]] of the [[Neoclassicism|Neoclassical]] style of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightened]] Establishment. Gothic ruins invoke multiple linked emotions by representing the collapse of human creations and inevitable [[Decomposition|decay]]– hence the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks.

Including a Gothic building in a story serves several purposes. It implies that the story is set in the past, coveys a sense of [[Social isolation|isolation]] or dissociation from the rest of the world, indicates religious associations, and evokes feelings of awe. The architecture often served as a mirror for the characters and events of the story.<ref>Bayer-Berenbaum, L. 1982. ''The Gothic Imagination: Expansion in Gothic Literature and Art''. Rutherford: [[Fairleigh Dickinson University Press]].</ref> The buildings in ''The Castle of Otranto'', for example, are riddled with [[tunnels]] that characters use to move back and forth in secret. This movement mirrors the secrets surrounding Manfred's possession of the castle and how it came into his family.<ref>Walpole, H. 1764 (1968). ''The Castle of Otranto''. Reprinted in ''Three Gothic Novels''. London: Penguin Press.</ref>