The Immortality of Gothic Literature: the many ways in which the contemporary gothic work changes

Abstract

Over the centuries gothic texts – and later gothic films – have sought to bring terror and shock into the hearts of its audience. Through recognizable mysteries and terrors the gothic novel has branched out into various genres. Even though the term gothic has changed meaning since its very origin, most themes and motives have not. From arguably the first gothic novel The Castle of Otranto written by Horace Walpole in 1765, to modern novels as The Historian written by Elizabeth Kostova in 2005, characters face the same dangerous buildings, landscapes, journeys, boundaries, choices – moral and immoral - and villains.