In this essay I will be looking at how successful Oscar Wilde was atcreating a gothic novel. I will be using Edgar Alan Poe’s short storyThe Fall of the House of Usher and the film Bram Stokers, Dracula and the
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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In this essay I will be looking at how successful Oscar Wilde was atcreating a gothic novel. I will be using Edgar Alan Poe’s short story‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and the film ‘Bram Stokers, Dracula’and the earlier version ‘Nosferatu’ as reference pieces to the gothicform. Other pieces I shall be looking at are Goya’s ‘The Sleep ofReason Produces Monsters’, and Henry Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’.
What is gothic? The dictionary defines gothic as ‘the style ofarchitecture prevalent in Western Europe in the 12th – 16th centuriesand revived in the 18th – 19th centuries characterized by pointedarches’. But it is much more than that; gothic represents freedom andhuman nature at its best. Gothic is action without reaction andfeeling without consequence. It allows use to indulge our mostsecretive fantasies, this is one the main reasons the gothic genrecame back in the 18th century because the upper classes were becomingbored with just sitting and going out all the time, with the onlyworry of what other people thought of them, but when gothic came backin it allowed them to indulge in most secret desires such asbestiality, vampires, homosexuality and other erotic pass times.Gothic architecture is castles and churches, these usually have largetall pillars and high spiked roof tops, the idea was when you prayedthe pray floated up to g-d so if the roof was spiked at the top, theprays would build up and finally be projected towards the heavens.
When …
…ee the gore andthe vampirism that the movie is about, we see the love aspect and theromance associated with other genres that aren’t gothic. When youstudy gothic fully you do realise that it is the dramatic romance andthe freedom that make gothic what it is, a perfect genre for thepeople who wish to indulge their darkest fantasies or just want a bonechilling read for the holidays. In ‘Dracula’ and ‘Nosferatu’ we seegothic set pieces like the old castle, the good and evil sides ofhuman nature with damsels in distress begin rescued by their truelove. In the end gothic is either something you live by or somethingthat you enjoy every so often. But who ever you are there is a macabrefascination for this insight into the taboo of love and evil combined.
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[1] Ibid.
[2] Ibid.
