Gothic Literature

The origins of Gothic literature can be traced to various historical, cultural, and artistic precedents. Figures found in ancient folklore, such as the Demon Lover, the Cannibal Bridegroom, the Devil, and assorted demons, later populated the pages of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Gothic novels and dramas. In addition, many seventeenth-and eighteenth-century works are believed to have served as precursors to the development of the Gothic tradition in Romantic literature. These works include plays by William Shakespeare, such as Hamlet (c. 1600–01) and Macbeth (1606), which feature supernatural elements, demons, and apparitions, and Daniel Defoe’s An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727), which was written to support religion and discourage superstition by providing evidence of the existence of good spirits, angels, and other divine manifestations, and by ridiculing delusions and naive credulity. However, while these elements were present in literature and folklore prior to the mid-eighteenth century, when the Gothic movement began, it was the political, social, and theological landscape of eighteenth-century Europe that served as an impetus for this movement. Edmund Burke’s treatise A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) introduced the concept of increasing appreciation for the nature of experiences characterized by the “sublime” and “beautiful” by depicting and then engaging (vicariously) in experiences comprised of elements that are contrary in nature, such as terror, death, and evil. Writers composed Gothic narratives during this period largely in response to anxiety over the change in social and political structure brought about by such events as the French Revolution, the rise in secular-based government, and the rapidly changing nature of the everyday world brought about by scientific advances and industrial development, in addition to an increasing aesthetic demand for realism rather than folklore and fantasy. The Gothic worlds depicted fears about what might happen, what could go wrong, and what could be lost by continuing along the path of political, social, and theological change, as well as reflecting the desire to return to the time of fantasy and belief in supernatural intervention that characterized the Middle Ages. In some cases Gothic narratives were also used to depict horrors that existed in the old social and political order—the evils of an unequal, intolerant society. In Gothic narratives writers were able to both express the anxiety generated by this upheaval and, as Burke suggested, increase society's appreciation and desire for change and progress.

It is Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) that is generally acclaimed as the original work of Gothic literature—despite the fact that some of the Gothic trappings found in Walpole’s work were present in works such as Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753)—because in his narrative Walpole brings together elements of the supernatural and horrific, and models his ruined castle setting after his real-life residence, Strawberry Hill, a modern version of a medieval castle. The characters in the novel try to succeed in the modern world and to adhere to the optimism and forward-looking agenda they have been asked to advance, but a dark, ancient evil from the distant past dooms them to failure. While the literary merits of Walpole’s novel were challenged by many critics, the work inspired the reading public and authors alike, and works imitative of Otranto, written in what became known as the Gothic style, became extremely popular. Brother and sister John Aikin and Anna Laetitia (Aikin) Barbauld, in their Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (1773), represent the intellectual and psychological mechanics of Gothic literature, and offer “Sir Bertrand, A Fragment”, a story written in Gothic style, to illustrate their assertions. Ann Radcliffe, like Walpole, is considered one of the founders of the Gothic genre. Radcliffe began her career as a Gothic writer with the publication of her well-received novel The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne in 1789, and quickly followed up with the novels A Sicilian Romance and The Romance of the Forest published in 1790 and 1791, respectively. Radcliffe’s 1794 novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, is regarded by many as the quintessential example of eighteenth-century fiction at its finest, and it is for this work that she is best known. Mrs. Eliza Parsons’s Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) is an example of the melodramatic popular “shilling shocker” or “penny dreadful” type of Gothic fiction, a debased imitation of Radcliffe’s style, characterized by gross excess and lack of literary skill, that was parodied by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey (1818). Parsons was one of many novelists, including Edward Bulwer-Lytton—held as an author of a more “elevated” or skilled example of the popular Gothic melodrama—who produced works of this kind. Other works considered classic examples of the Gothic novel are Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk (1796) and Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), both of which epitomize the stock Gothic character of the outsider or social outcast, who must face the consequences of committing mortal sin.

The great Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge also contributed to the Gothic tradition in literature and, according to critic Fred Botting, produced “major innovations, or renovations of the genre” that “drew it closer to aspects of Romanticism.” The Romantic writers, asserts Botting as well as other commentators, while utilizing the settings and devices developed by Walpole, Radcliffe, and others, focused and expanded upon the psychological, internal qualities of the protagonists, and dealt with such themes as the search for identity, desire versus duty, social alienation, and the search for truth. William Godwin and his daughter, Mary Shelley, are the Romantic writers most closely associated with the Gothic tradition. Godwin’s Things as They Are or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) utilizes the Gothic tradition to indict political repression and protest the tyrannical rule of the day, while Shelley’s Gothic in Frankenstein (1818) urges personal integrity and social responsibility in an age of scientific progress and represents the anxiety produced by the disruption of the traditional, known natural world order.

While English writers are credited with founding the Gothic novel, Scottish writers such as James Hogg contributed heavily to the genre, and many English-language works were influenced by German literary traditions, particularly the works of such writers as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Sir Walter Scott’s works reflect a German sensibility and works such as his Waverly (1814)—as well as the works of others, including Walpole, Radcliffe, Shelley, Maturin, and Lewis—in turn inspired Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, and James Fenimore Cooper, some of the most notable authors who developed what became the American Gothic tradition in literature. In addition, the English Gothic tradition influenced French authors, including Gaston Leroux, and Russian authors, including Fyodor Dostoevsky and Anton Chekhov. Since its inception, the Gothic genre in literature has undergone numerous changes and adaptations, but its essential role as a means of depicting humanity’s deepest, darkest fears, and otherwise unspeakable evils—both real and imagined—has endured. (Quoted from www.enotes.com)

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll is the pseudonym of the English writer and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Carroll was born in Cheshire, England, on Jan. 27, 1832. As a young boy, puzzles, logic, and mathematics fascinated him and this interest continued throughout his life. His pen name, in fact, is an anglicized form of the Latin translation of his first and middle names, “Carolus Lodovicus.”

In 1855, while working toward becoming a priest, Carroll met Henry Liddell and his family, which included Alice Liddell, the young girl who provided the inspiration for both Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. By 1861, Lewis Carroll had already published a few volumes on mathematics and some short poetry. However, his most famous works were still ahead of him. He conceived of the Alice stories during a few boat rides with the Liddell children, when he would actually tell the stories aloud, making them up on the journey.

In 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was printed and it immediately became quite popular, providing Carroll with a substantial income. Six years later, he published Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

Over the next thirty years, Lewis Carroll wrote numerous other books, including The Hunting of the Snark and Sylvie and Bruno, in addition to some discourses on mathematics and logic, but none ever quite matched the appeal and popularity that his stories of Alice did.

Carroll died on Jan. 14, 1898, from complications of either bronchitis or pneumonia. (Quoted from www.enotes.com)

The First Novel in the World

In the year 1007, a Japanese noble woman, Murasaki Shikibu, wrote the world’s first full novel. Called The tale of Genji, it tells the story of a prince looking for love and wisdom. In its English translation it covers 54 chapters over 1,000 pages of text.

By the Middle Ages there were many novels about kings and heroic knights but in the late 1500s the anti-romance movement took roots and villains became the main characters. The first such novel was Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, written in 1554 by an unknown author. It is the story of a poor boy who makes his way in the world by tricking his employers.

The antinovel was invented by the French. Antinovel writers insist that traditional novels sketch a false appearance of the world in much the the same way as television soap operas do - or as Murasaki Shikibu did. Instead of creating fantasy plots and characters, antinovelists emphasize the minute details of life and the world.

The author who wrote the most novels ever also is a women. Dame Barbara Cartland (7/1/1901 - 5/21/2000) completed a novel every two weeks, publishing more than 723 novels, which sold more than 1 billion copies in 36 languages, making her the best-selling novelist of all time.

The Real Name

Abhishek Kumar Yadav (Annu)

Abigail Van Buren (Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips)

Abram Tertz (Andrei Sinyavsky)

Acton Bell (Anne Bront)

Adinegoro (Djamaluddin)

Alain-Fournier (Henri Alban-Fournier)

Alberto Moravia (Alberto Pincherle)

Ann Landers (Esther "Eppie" Pauline Friedman Lederer)

Alcofribas Nasier (Franois Rabelais)

Alexander Barks (Charlie Christensen)

Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Franois Thibault)

Anne Rice (Howard Allen O'Brien)

Anne Knish (Arthur Davison Ficke)

Arkon Daraul (likely Idries Shah)

Ashida Kim (Radford William Davis)

Seiko Legru (Janwillem van de Wetering)

Barbara Michaels (Barbara Mertz)

Blaise Cendrars (Frdric Louis Sauser)

Bob Hart (Al Trace|Albert J. Trace)

Boris Akunin (Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili)

Boz (Charles Dickens)

Branislav Nusic' (Ben Akiba)

Cherry Wilder (Cherry Barbara Grimm)

Cherubina de Gabriak (Elisaveta Ivanovna Dmitrieva)

Christopher Hunter (Radford William Davis)

Clem Watts ([Albert J. Trace)

Cordwainer Smith (Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger)

Currer Bell (Charlotte Bront)

Curzio Malaparte (Kurt Erich Suckert)

Daniel Defoe (Daniel Foe)

Daniil Kharms (Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev)

Danuta de Rhodes (Dan Rhodes)

David Axton (Dean Koontz)

David Michaels (Raymond Benson)

Dazai Osamu (Shuji Tsushima)

Dear Abby (Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips)

Douglas Spaulding ([Ray Bradbury])

Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel)

Edith Van Dyne (L. Frank Baum)

Edogawa Rampo (Hirai Taro-)

Edward Pygge (Ian Hamilton, Clive James, Russell Davies)

Edwin Caskoden (Charles Major)

El Hakim (Abu Hanifah)

Elia (Charles Lamb)

Elizabeth Peters (Barbara Mertz)

Ellis Bell (Emily Bront)

Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter)

Elsa Triolet (Elsa Kagan)

Emanuel Morgan (Witter Bynner)

Erich Maria Remarque (Erich Paul Remark)

Flann O'Brien (Brian O'Nolan)

Francis Bennett (Edwin Keppel Bennett)

Franoise Sagan (Franoise Quoirez)

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

George Sand (Amandine Dupin)

Georges Courteline (Georges Victor Marcel Moinaux

Grace Greenwood (Sara Jane Lippincott)

Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky)

H.N. Turtletaub (Harry Turtledove)

Hard Pan (Geraldine Bonner)

Harold Robbins (Harold Rubin)

Havank (Hans van der Kallen)

Herg (Georges Remi)

Hugh Conway (Frederick John Fargus)

Ilya Ilf (Ilya Arnoldovich Faynzilberg)

Irwin Shaw (Irwin Shamforoff)

Italo Svevo (Ettore Schmitz)

J.K. Rowling (Joanne Rowling)

James Dillinger (James Robert Baker)

James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon)

Jay Livingston (Jacob Harold Levison)

Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter)

Jean Plaidy (Eleanor Hibbert)

Johann Joachim Sautscheck (Roman Turovsky-Savchuk)

John Beynon (John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris)

John Christopher (Samuel Youd)

John le Carre (David John Moore Cornwell)

John Wyndham (John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris)

Joseph Conrad (Jzef Teodor Na?e;cz Konrad Korzeniowski)

Korney Chukovsky (Nikolay Vasilyevich Korneychukov)

Keno (Eric Killinger)

Kinoysan (Ari Wulandari)

Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

Lorenzo da Ponte (Emmanuele Conegliano)

Louis-Ferdinand Cline (Louis-Ferdinand Destouches)

Mark Brandis (Nikolai von Michalewsky)

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie)

Michael Arlen (Dikran Kuyumjian)

Michael Innes (J. I. M. Stewart)

Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)

Multatuli (Eduard Douwes Dekker)

Murray Leinster (Will F. Jenkins)

Nancy Boyd (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Natsume Soseki (Natsume Kinnosuke)

Nisa (Nicola Salerno)

Novalis (Friedrich Leopold)

O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

Ogdred Weary (Edward Gorey)

Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton)

Pandir Kelana (R.M. Slamet Danusudirdjo)

Paul Annixter (Howard Allison Sturtzel)

Paul Celan (Paul Antschel)

Pedje (Purwadi Djunaedi)

Jean Ray (Jean Raymond Marie de Kremer)

Pauline Rage (Anne Desclos)

Peter Gast (Heinrich Kselitz)

Pierre Loti (Louis Marie Julien Viaud)

Piers Anthony (Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob)

Phillip Guston (Phillip Goldstein)

Publius (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, when writing The Federalist Papers)

Q (Arthur Quiller-Couch)

Remy Silado (Yappie Tambayong)

Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

Richard Leander (Richard von Volkmann)

Robert Jordan (James Oliver Rigney, Jr.)

Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis)

Romain Gary (Romain Kacew)

Rosemary Edghill (eluki bes shahar)

Saint-John Perse (Alexis Saint-Lger Lger)

Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

Sapper (H.C. McNeile)

Selasih (Sariamin Ismail)

Silence Dogood (Benjamin Franklin)

Sister Nivedita (Margaret Elizabeth Noble)

Stash Cairo (Craig Hamilton)

Stefan Brockhoff (Dieter Cunz, Richard Plant, Oskar Seidlin)

Steele Rudd (Arthur Hoey Davis)

Student (William Sealey Gosset, discoverer of Student's t-distribution in statistics)

Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton)

Sutan Iwan Soekri Munaf (Sutan Roedy Irawan Syafrullah)

The Fredman (Karl Mikael Bellman)

Thoinot Arbeau (Jehan Tabourot)

Titi Nginung (Arswendo Atmowiloto)

TM Maple (Jim Burke)

Toni Morrison (Chloe Anthony Wofford)

Vercors (Jean Bruller)

Vernon Sullivan (Boris Vian)

Umberto Saba (Umberto Poli)

Voltaire (Franois-Marie Arouet)

Walter (Henry Spencer Ashbee)

Willibald Alexis (Georg Wilhelm Heinrich Haring)

Woody Allen (Allen Stewart Konigsberg)

Yevegny Petrov (Yevgeniy Petrovich Kataev)

Yukio Mishima (Kimitake Hiraoka)

Quotation

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. G.K. Chesterton (1874—1936)

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. William Shakespeare (1564—1616)

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary. Franklin P. Adams (1881—1960)

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist. H.L. Mencken (1880—1956)

A detective digs around in the garbage of people's lives. A novelist invents people and then digs around in their garbage. Joe Gores

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual. Honore De Balzac (1799—1850)

About Novel

The word novel originally derived from the Latin novus, meaning ‘new’.

The first novel, called The Story of Genji, was written in 1007 by Japanese noble woman, Murasaki Shikibu.

The first novel sold through a vending machine—at the Paris Metro—was Murder on the Orient Express.

Ernest Vincent Wright’s 1939 novel Gadsby has 50,110 words, none of which contains the letter “e”.

Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, 1899, into a wealthy, aristocratic family. His father, Vladimir Dimitrievich Nabokov, was a liberal politician, lawyer, and journalist. The household was Anglophile - Nabokov spoke Russian and English, and at the age of five he learned French. Nabokov received his education at the Tenishev, St. Petersburg's most innovative school. At 16 he inherited a large estate from his father's brother, but he did not have much time to enjoy his wealth. During the Russian Revolution his father was briefly arrested. The family emigrated to Berlin and Nabokov entered Trinity College, Cambridge, from where he graduated in 1923. Vladimir Dimitrievich was murdered in Berlin in 1922 by a Russian monarchist.

Nabokov lived in Berlin for 15 years and worked as a translator, tutor, and tennis coach. He won acceptance as the leading young writer in the Berlin Russian community. Most of his readers were Russian émigrés—in the Soviet Russia his books were banned or ignored. In his early works Nabokov dealt with the death, the flow of time and sense of loss. Already using complex metaphors, Nabokov themes became later more ambiguous puzzles - he was a remarkable chess player—that challenge the reader to involve in the game. ''Readers are not sheep," he once wrote to a publisher, "and not every pen (pun) tempts them." In Lectures on Literature (1980) Nabokov wrote that to be a good reader one do not have to lean heavily on emotional identification, action, and the social-economic or historical angle, or belong to a book club. "The good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense—which sense I propose to develop in myself and in others whenever I have the chance."

In Zashchita Luzhina (1930, The Defense) Nabokov took the role of a grandmaster and played with the expectations of his readers. The protagonist, Aleksandr Luzhin, is a chess phenomenon, who becomes a character on a giant chessboard. Luzhin finds it increasingly difficult to make transition from the world of the game to everyday reality. After suffering a mental breakdown, he recuperates slowly with the help of a young woman. Luzhin starts to believe that a cunning opponent is trying to manipulate the moves he makes in his life. He decides to throw himself out of a window and notices that the courtyard below seems to look like a giant chessboard. Luzhin is right: there is an opponent and he is Nabokov himself, who makes the point that the story is an artistic creation.

As a writer Nabokov gained his first literary success with his translations of some of Heine's songs. Nabokov's first novel, Mashenka (1926), was written in Russia. In 1924 Nabokov married Véra Evseevna Slonim, who came from a Jewish family; they had one son, Dmitri. Nabokov's early nine novels were published under the pen name Vladimir Sirin. These works included The Gift (1937-38), a novel and an intellectual history of 19th-century Russia, and Invitation to a Beheading (1938), a political fantasy, in which the remaining days in the life the central character correspond to the length of his pencil. Also Nabokov himself wrote everything in longhand. "I cannot type," he confessed in an interview in 1962.

When Hitler released the killer of his father, Nabokov moved to Paris in 1937. There he met the Irish novelist James Joyce. With a loan he received from the composer Rachmaninov, Nabokov moved three years later with his wife and son to the United States—he crossed the ocean on the Champlain, where he had a first-class cabin.

Nabokov taught at Wellesley College and Cornell University, delivering highly acclaimed lectures on Flaubert, Joyce, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and others. He also continued his extensive researches in entomology, becoming a recognized authority on butterflies. He also held a modest but official position at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. The job lasted until 1948. As a lepidopterist he was self-taught, but his attitude to scientific work was serious, not dilettantish. Especially he was interested in Blues, the tribe Polyommatini, found all over the world. Later Nabokov estimated that between the years 1949 and 1959 he traveled more than 150,000 miles on butterfly trips. His years at the museum Nabokov described "the most delightful and thrilling in all my adult life." In his boyhood Nabokov had already made notes on butterflies and in 1920 The Entomologist had published his article 'A Few Notes on Crimean Lepidoptera'. "My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting," Nabokov once said. Nabokov's first publication in English was an article titled 'A Few Notes on Crimean Lepidoptera'. Changing language was not easy - ''What agony it was, in the early 'forties, to switch from Russian to English,'' he wrote in a letter in 1954.

Nabokov's first novels in English were The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) and Bend Sinister (1947). The Atlantic and the New Yorker started to publish Nabokov's short stories in the early 1940s. In America, apart from collecting his shorter prose of the 1930s into one book, Vesna V Fial'te, Nabokov published only memoirs and verse in Russian. Conclusive Evidence (1951) was an autobiography, which was later revived as Speak, Memory (1966), set mainly in pre-revolutionary Russia. When the Australian critic and writer Andrew Field planned to write a biography on Nabokov, the answer was: "I told everything about myself in Speak, Memory, and it was not a very pleasant portrait. I appear as a precious person in that book. All that chess and those butterflies. Not very interesting."

It took six years before Nabokov finished Lolita, a literary bomb. The English writer Graham Greene cited it among the best books of 1955. Edmund Wilson, Evelyn Waugh, and E.M. Forster did not share his view. With Lolita, Nabokov gained a huge success, although it was banned in Paris in 1956-58 and not published in full in America and the U.K. until 1958.

Lolita is one of the most controversial novels of the 20th-century, in which the rhetoric of the protagonist both captivates and repels. The story deals with the desire of a middle-aged pedophile Humbert Humbert, the narrator, for a 12-year-old girl. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins," he starts his story. Humbert is said to be a metaphor for the writer and his art, and for the old world—Humbert is an European expatriate—encountering the new, represented by an American teenage girl, in all its vulgarity. Humbert keeps a prison-diary of his lifelong fascination with pubescent "nymphets". The first is Annabel Leigh, who dies of typhus, but then he finds Dolores Haze, his Lolita, in a New England town. She reminds him of the little girl he loved as a boy. During the course of the story, Humbert loses her to Clare Quilty, a playwright and pornographic filmmaker. Humbert kills him and dies in a prison of a heart attack. Lolita dies in childbirth as delivering a stillborn daughter.

Stanley Kubrick's film version of the book was based on Nabokov's screenplay. "I knew that if I did not write the script somebody else would," Nabokov said, "and I also knew that at best the end product is such cases is less of a blend than a collision of interpretations."

Lolita allowed Nabokov to abandon teaching and devote himself entirely to writing. In 1957 Nabokov published Pnin, a story of a hapless Russian professor of literature on an American college campus. Pale Fire (1962) was an ambitious mixture of literary forms, partly a one-thousand-line poem in heroic couplets by John Shade, partly a commentary on them by a mad exiled king, Kinbote. "I can do what only a true artist can do," describes the mad Kinbote himself, "pounce upon the forgotten butterfly or revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things..."

From 1959, Nabokov lived in Switzerland, where his permanent home was at the Montreux Palace Hotel. He continued to collect butterflies, which after his death were stored at the Cantonal Museum of Zoology of Lausanne. Nabokov's later works include Ada (1969), a love story set on the planet of Antiterra, a mixture of Russia and America, Transparent Things (1972), and Look at the Harlequins! (1975), in which Nabokov's own life coincides occasionally with the protagonist's, also a writer.

The writer's son Dmitri has undertook the translation of several of Nabokov's books from these later years. Nabokov himself wanted to be valued more as an American writer than a Russian one. In the Soviet Union he perhaps enjoyed greater fame than in the West. Nabokov died in Lausanne on July 2, 1977. Among Nabokov's major critical works are his study of Nikolay Gogol (1944), and translation of Aleksandr Pushkin's masterpiece Eugene Onegin (1964), with commentary. The ten-year-long work was first brought out by the Bollingen Foundation in four volumes. (Quoted from http://www.kirjasto.sci.)