As a literary phenomenon, one of the ultimate goals is "Art for art's sake。" Gothic literature had been ignored or even criticized for a long time。 Not until the late Victorian period did gothic literature become a formal literary genre。 Gothic literature had a profound impact for development of literary style at that time while it also set off a boom of short ghost story, which affected Allan Poe's death-themed story to appear。

As a sort of literature, Gothic literature has an innate paranoia ultimate pursuit for dark depression, death aesthetics, religious feeling and aestheticism, which shows a lonely alienation and gloomy ethos to explore the most thought-provoking social issues: racial discrimination, war and hatred。 Spiritual obsession in death drives gothic culture to go look for another thought about life pain and death constantly。论文网

Gothic novel has its special meaning which is related to social reality and human nature。 First, it takes unreasonable grotesque form to reflect the formation of tangled complex social reality of capitalist society。 Second, on one hand, Gothic novel renders the social evils and darkness or uglyness of human nature, but on the other hand, the Gothic terror contained a kind of spiritual thought towards goods。 Gothic novel’s black side deepen the absurdity of the world and highlight the complexity of human nature, and thus arouse the reader's interest in reading and a strong lasting meditation and alert。

Lots of descriptions occur in eerie castle’s revenge stories or ghost stories that forces to deal with brutal passion and supernatural horrible theme with its strong 'non-realism' characteristics。 It makes gothic literature a profound impact in the world literary history。 

2 Literature Review

2。1 Origin and Development of Gothic Novel

"Gothic" comes from the word "Goths" which originally means a Germanic tribe living in the northeast border of the Roman Empire expressing the meaning: "raw", "barbaric", "bloody," "vulgar," and etc。 (Qi Tianman, 2007)。 From the beginning of the 12th century, the word "Gothic" started connecting with buildings, which formed a new architectural style: towering spires, massive stone walls, narrow windows, colored glass, gloomy interior, dark tunnel, etc。 Under the influence of the Renaissance by thinkers, the word Gothic has gradually been given a variety of meanings, such as savage, backward, mysterious, dark ages, middle ages, and so on。

By the middle of 18th century, the word Gothic has become a new genre of fiction。 In the beginning, such novels did not get everyone's praise, certainly causing no boom。 The earliest Gothic novel belonged to Castle of Otranto, written by a British writer, Horace Walpole。 Although this theme was all the rage, it had not been accepted and not imitated by other authors。 Not until the 1790s, had the Gothic novel become a new trend, followed by bold novelists。 Why we call it Gothic novels? Because Horace Walpole subtitled the story a Gothic story beneath the headline。 This is the origin of Gothic novel’s name。

The appearance of Gothic novels connected not only with British Graveyard Poets’ Gothic complex, but also with the Gothic aesthetic standards。 As soon as this kind of novel came out, it became the most popular genre, quickly expanded from the United Kingdom to the whole Europe and America。文献综述

From then on, the Gothic novel gradually formed two different branches。 One is the horror Gothic novel, and the other is the sentimental Gothic novel。 Both of the branches have a very far-reaching impact for the United States。

2。2 Previous Study Abroad 

Careful study of Gothic literature began in twenties or thirties in the 20th century。 Since seventies and eighties, the study had become an unprecedented new upsurge due to the impact of the new academic ideas and concepts of literary criticism。