Means of creating tension in the English Gothic short stories.

INTRODUCTION

The short story, like the stage
has its conventions
Anton Chekhov

From the 18th century to the present days, Gothic fiction has fascinated and terrified.
Gothic as a genre has recently experienced a sharp rise in literary prestige, due largely, though not exclusively, to feminism nowadays. Yet most commentators also agree that Gothic fiction is melodramatic, repetitive, implausible, incoherent, and full of clichés. This genre is not that critics of the Gothic fiction do not talk about aesthetic questions but rather that they highlight different aspects of aesthetic response.
We suppose each author integrates Gothic conventions into postmodern narratives that are distinct in style and approach. Beneath its trappings of ghosts, monsters, and psychopaths, quality Gothic fiction asks important philosophical questions about human nature. It can be an invaluable aesthetic tool for helping teens develop their own moral compasses. Themes of murder, incest, and dark sexuality can help young people understand the whole spectrum of human behavior. After all, the work of horror is not interested in the civilized furniture of our livesour socially acceptable and pleasantly enlightened character as Stephen King has suggested. But it is interested in all of those things that are not talked about in school or at the dinner tablethose very aspects of life that so many teens are desperately struggling to understand. And what better type of reading for them than books that they perceive to be appalling to those in authority: parents, teachers, and librarians.
The Gothic is a key genre in the retrieval of an alternative history of aesthetic experience. The power of Gothic lies in its unsettling

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER 1. HISTORY BACKGROUND 7
1.1.The Interpretation of the Terms Gothic and Gothic Fiction. 7
1.2.The Gothic Evolution in Literature. 13
1.2.1. The First Wave of Gothic Novels: 1765-1820. 13
1.2.2. Gothic Fiction in the Nineteenth Century. 15
1.2.3. Modern Gothic. 16
CHAPTER 2. THE GOTHIC SHORT- STORY TRADITION 20
2.1. The Short Story as a Phenomenon of the Gothic Fiction. 20
2.2. The Features of the Gothic Short Story. 23
2.2.1. Language. 23
2.2.2. Imagery and Setting. 25
2.2.3. Characters. 27
CHAPTER 3. CREATING TENSION AND ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR IN THE GOTHIC SHORT STORIES 31
3.1.Features of Setting. 31
3.2. Typically Gothic Characters. 39
3.3. The Semantic field of the Short Stories. 45
CONCLUSION 57
BYBLIOGRAPHY 60

BYBLIOGRAPHY

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