The Victorian Gothic.

Hi my dear readers! If you have attended to my class presentation about the influence of the gothic in the Victorian Age, you must know what I'm going to tell you in this post because I will deal more or less with the same topic.

Although in the Victorian Age the Gothic fiction was not more the dominant genre, in many ways it was in a very creative stage at that time. For instance, Edgar Allan Poe was an important and innovative author in this period. Instead of the traditional elements of gothic stories, like the supernatural, prophecies and the rest of them seen in class, his stories focuses more on the psychology of his characters. A good example of Poe's Gothic would be his story "The Fall of the House of Usher", published in 1839.

Another innovative element was the introduction of the byronic hero that comes from the Romatic Period into the Gothic. The typical byronic hero is arrogant, cunning, disrespectful, intelligent, sexually attractive, sophisticated and educated among other characteristics. So the epitome of the byronic hero could be Dorian Gray, the character invented by Oscar Wilde in 1890.

The last innovative element I'm going to treat is the inclusion of topics like the ethics and the moral degeneration of the society. This fact happened in the 1880s and the Gothic Fiction dealing with themes like this was called Urban Gothic. In it, social structures of the time were questioned. One important book that portrays this was Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, published in 1836.

Well, to conclude I say that I hope you enjoy this post and also I hope that the aim of it will be realized. Obviously, the aim is to teach and to entertain ;)