![]() ![]() If you want to re-add it, I won't delete it again, even if it's not on the requisite number of people's "Gothic" shelves. Other landmarks of Gothic fiction are William Beckford’s Oriental romance Vathek (1786) and Charles Robert Maturin’s story of an Irish Faust, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). The settings reflected elements of horror and fear. Writers of such works combined some elements of the medieval literature considered too fanciful and modern literature classified as too limited to realism. ![]() "Gothic" can be a relatively subjective term, not as cut-and-dried and easy to define as such even for people who know literature and many other people are relatively clueless about what it is (as some of their list additions demonstrate!) I don't know the list creator, Rachel but I'm guessing she set up that criteria as a way of bringing in an objective yardstick, and replacing idiosyncratic individual judgement with the collective perspective of many readers (in the hope that the latter would be more likely to be accurate).Īll of that said, I can see Gothic elements in Dracula, though I personally usually associate "Gothic" with something set strictly in or around one particular sinister building. A more sensational type of Gothic romance exploiting horror and violence flourished in Germany and was introduced to England by Matthew Gregory Lewis with The Monk (1796). Gothic literature originated in the early nineteenth century. (I don't know how large that number has to be.) The more people who have a "Gothic" shelf (I don't myself) and list a particular book on it, the more likely it is that Goodreads will list "Gothic" as one of the book's genres. On the book records, where a list of "Genres" is supplied, the Goodreads program apparently lists every customized shelf name (like "Gothic," "Fiction," "Horror," etc.) that a certain number of people have all shelved the book as. Some very simple, generic shelf names, like Gothic, are used by a LOT of people, even though they don't coordinate with each other. But many people go on to create customized shelves of their own, sometimes by genre (including "Gothic"). When you join Goodreads, the program automatically sets your bookshelves up with three basic shelves (read, currently reading, and to read). Jon, good question! There is but one person can't do it alone. Jon wrote: "If the main consideration for a book's inclusion is it having the genre listing of Gothic on its book page, is there a way to make such a thing happen?" ![]()
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