Editing Gothic fiction (section)

===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>