Elements of Gothic Literature - describes the most important element of gothic literature with examples from various canonical texts.

Gothic literature was born in 1764 when Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, which is considered to be the first gothic novel ever written. Gothic literature was originally written as a reaction to the age of reason, order, and the politics of eighteenth-century England. Containing anti-Catholic sentiments and mythical aspects, Gothic literature explored the tension between what we fear and what we desire. The stories were usually set in some kind of castle or old …

…rest upon them. In The Castle of Otranto, they act as the coincidence drivers as well as supply some of the omens and visions, another element of gothic literature. They bring the real story to the surface in The Ruins of the Abbey of Fitz-Martin, and provide the foundation for the story in The Vampyre. Without the element of supernatural and unexplainable events, much of the canonical gothic literature would not stand on its own.