Gothic novel

A European Romantic, pseudo-medieval literary genre that took shape in England between 1790 and 1830. It was "invented" by Horace Walpole, whose Castle of Otranto (1765) became the epitome of this genre. "The gothic has been associated with with a rebellion against a constraining neoclassical aesthetic ideal of order and unity" (Kilgour).

Sources

• Kilgour, Maggie: The Rise of the Gothic Novel, London: Routledge, 1995.
• http://cai.ucdavis.edu/waters-sites/gothicnovel/155breport.html
• http://www.virtualsalt.com/gothic.htm