About the Godly Goth

The Godly Goth is not so concerned with great editing and the next literary classic but the chills that an author can send down a reader’s back.  Can the author pull the reader fully into another world?  Will the reader be left with a sublime message about the world, the spiritual dimension and God?  These are the questions the Godly Goth asks when reviewing novels and films.  The Godly Goth searches for tales both read and watched that provoke the senses, emotions, mind and soul.

Gothic Literature is a genre that combines both horror and romance to create a pleasing sort of terror.  It embodies and appreciates extreme emotion, thrills of fear and sublime awe in an atmosphere-drenched writing that whisks the reader fully into its world.

Prominent features of Gothic literature include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, castles, darkness, secrets, madness, doubles, decay, haunted gothic architecture and hereditary curses.

Typical characters include Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, madwomen, angels, fallen angels, demons, monsters, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, femmes fatales, tyrants, bandits, maniacs, ghoul/zombies, animated human skeletons, the Wandering Jew, and the Devil.

Famous Gothic Literature
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1818
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin, 1818
The Vampyre by John William Polidori, 1819 (what began the vampire craze)
The Mummy by Jane Webb Loudon, 1827
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe, 1839
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, 1847
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1847
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851
A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott, 1866
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, 1891
Dracule by Bram Stroker, 1897
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, 1898
The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, 1902
Phantomn of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, 1910
Supernatural Horror in Literature by H.P. Lovecraft, 1936
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, 1938
Psycho by Robert Bloch, 1959
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, 1967
Salem’s Lot and The Shining by Stephen King, 1975,1977
Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, 1973-1988