Lecture Notes

GOTHIC & FICTIONAL HORROR BACKGROUND FOR FRANKENSTEIN

FICTIONAL HORROR

• Fiction = untrue / horror stories

• Purpose for the audience: • Scare / horrify / create an unsettling mood, tone, and setting

• Often overlaps with science fiction and/or fantasy (ex. Frankenstein – a classic horror science fiction novel)

• Modern horror stories found their roots in classic gothic horror stories / novels

GOTHIC HORROR

• Developed during the 19th and 20th century

• Popular to the new middle class people who sought entertainment

• Exotic and mythical influences

• Combines elements of horror and romance

CHARACTERISTICS OF GOTHIC HORROR – NOW SEEN IN MODERN HORROR • Suspense• Fear• Often includes a rational, scientifically minded character

that fails to heed warnings• Night / unreassuringly lack of light• Play a big part in adding to the “hellish” imagery

• Setting – used to build tension• Ex.) Dracula is set in an old, dark, and remote castle

GOTHIC / FICTIONAL HORROR FEATURES

• Terror (both psychological and physical)

• Mystery

• Supernatural / ghosts

• Haunting / haunted houses

• Gothic architecture (ex. gargoyles)

• Castles

• Death

• Madness

GOTHIC / FICTIONAL HORROR CHARACTERS• Tyrants • Villains• Bandits • Maniacs• Magicians• Vampires• Werewolves • Monsters• Demons• Ghosts

SOME CLASSIC HORROR AUTHORS

• Edgar Allen Poe – short story author• “The Cask of Amontillado”

• “The Masque of the Red Death”

• “The Raven”

• Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

• Bram Stoker - Dracula

FRANKENSTEIN • Author – Mary Shelley (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin)• 1797 – 1851• Her father was the political philosopher (William Godwin) ,

and her mother was the philosopher and feminist (Mary Wollstonecraft).

• Her mother died when she was 11 days old; therefore, she was raised by her father. Father remarried and provided his daughter with a rich, informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his liberal political theories.

• In 1814, she began a relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of her father’s political followers, and a Romantic poet and philosopher. She helped by editing and promoting his works.

• They married in 1816, after much traveling, death of their first child (prematurely born), and suicide of Percy’s first wife.

• Their next two children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence.

• In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm.

FRANKENSTEIN

• She came up with the idea for Frankenstein during the year 1816 while spending the summer in Geneva, Switzerland.

• She started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one.

• The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.

• The actual storyline was taken from a dream. Shelley was talking with three writer-colleagues, and they decided they would have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for weeks about what her possible storyline could be, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. Then, Frankenstein was written.

• Frankenstein is infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction.