Gothic literature started in 1746 with Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. That’s the orthodox line, the version you’ll see at the British Library exhibition. But it’s notoriously difficult to pinpoint the origins of literary genres; especially one as fuzzy and hard to define as ‘Gothic’. While there was certainly a definite tradition that started with Otranto, one thing that came quite clearly out of the exhibition was that the further you get away from that, the less cohesive and well-bounded that tradition becomes. Where do you draw the lines? Is Weird Fiction Gothic? Sometimes or always? Are zombies? What’s the difference between horror and Gothic? These aren’t questions I mean to answer – I don’t think they necessarily have simple answers – but if you include some of the more debatable offshoots of the tradition after Walpole, why not some things beforehand?
What I’m coming down to is this: is there such a thing as Classical Gothic? Continue reading
Ancient Worlds 