The Origins of Gothic Literature

“The Origins of Horror Literature” is a weekly series by West 10th’s Editor-in-Chief Travis Schuhardt during the month of October, explaining how the Gothic and Horror genres developed, offering recommendations on which classic Gothic tales and modern horror stories to check out, and discussing some horror-themed journals to submit your writing to during the Halloween season.

October 14th. Truly the midst of the Halloween season. And there’s no better way to get into the spirit of the season than a deep dive into the murky, terrifying territories of Gothic Literature and Horror Fiction. Each week, we will be exploring the surprising history of Gothic Literature, and recommending modern day horror stories to keep you up at night.

Many people believe the Gothic genre began and ended with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and this is simply not the case. The first tale that truly sparked an interest in the Gothic — and defined a lot of what we consider Gothic today — was written by a man named Horace Walpole and was called The Castle of Otranto.

Before we talk about the story, however, you need a little context. Horace Walpole was born in the early 18th century, and, if you were to go to London around that time, you would see very few medieval-looking castles, and those you would see would have fallen into disuse and disrepair. Buildings constructed in the Medieval Era were windowless and uncomfortable, cold and dank; if you were a member of the nobility in the 18th century, very reasonably you would want to live somewhere warmer, more comfortable. Many members of the nobility, were they to own a castle from their ancestors, would even tear them down for parts to build other residences.

Horace Walpole did not own a castle. One day, however, he decided that he wanted one. Thus, he began constructing his own castle. He called it Strawberry Hill House, and built it in the medieval style, but differed slightly in that he included stained-glass windows that you might see in churches. This style laid the foundation for a Gothic revival in the architecture of London.

But what does this have to do with literature? Well, whilst living in Strawberry Hill House, Horace Walpole, as the story goes, had a nightmare about a floating suit of armor that took place in the house that he lived, a Gothic-styled Castle. So, when he went to write down his dream and turn it into a novel, he wrote a story that took place in a castle that involved ghosts haunting suits of armor, as well as other supernatural elements. These elements came to define the Gothic genre of literature, all the way to today’s modern Gothic, informing even series like Scooby-Doo.

The spooky terrors that come to mind when we all think of Halloween night — the ghosts, the ghouls, the castles, the monsters — all sprouted from the nightmare of one man, living in his fake castle in the 18th century.


If you’d like to check out The Castle of Otranto, you can find the entire book online at this link:

The Castle of Otranto

I, personally, would not recommend the read, as it can be a bit slow and confusing, but it is there if you’d like to see the origins of the Gothic genre.

Reading Recommendation: As for stories I would recommend to get you in the Halloween mood, Brian Evenson’s short story No Matter Which Way We Turned is a spooky, quick, two-page read that’s great to share around a campfire or even in your room by candlelight if you’re looking for a scare, or to be just a little unsettled. If you read it, let us know what you think!

Places to Submit: Don’t think we’d leave you out to dry with no places to submit. Check out these places to submit your Halloween-themed or horror writings!

1. If you’re interested in writing Folktales, or have a great local horror story from back home, try here:

https://www.nosetouchpress.com/call/

The requirements are 4,000-8,000 words and submissions open November 1st and run until January, so you have all of Halloween season (and beyond) to inspire you.

2. If you’re already sitting on a horror story or some dark fiction that just needs a little touch up, then I’d recommend submitting to LampLight:

https://lamplightmagazine.com/submissions/

Up to 7,000 words; submissions open on October 15th and close December 15th. This publication does publish reprints, meaning if you already have a horror story posted somewhere, say a blog of sorts, you can still submit here as well!

3. You can submit your poems, short stories, and artwork to us starting today! Click the submit tab to find out how. This is not a horror or Halloween themed submission; just send us your best! We’re open until mid-December. Hope to see your work there!

Thank you for reading, be sure to subscribe and check back every week for stories, poems, reading recommendations, and places to submit your work!

All historical information in this article comes from the NYU class “Gothic Literature.”

From our Editors: thoughts about Paris from Audrey

Reflecting on six years of French class

Audrey Deng is the Copy Editor at West 10th and the Arts Editor at Washington Square News. She is a sophomore studying Comparative Literature and English. Talk to her about Frank Stella's retrospective at the Whitney, because she's excited about that.In my mind, Paris exists in textbook images from high school, a series of impressions divided by semester. In the fall, French class was a sanctuary; we would sip hot chocolate while thinking about what we should/could/would do in the languid conditionnel tense, snow piling outside of the window. We would read about (and later eat) delectable French holiday pastries like Bouche de Noël and fondant cake. In the spring, we flung open the windows and projected images of tulip-lined streets to "La Vie en Rose." Paris, just saying the word Paris, implied panache. I felt that simply by being in French class, we students sat straighter, spines strengthened by speaking the language of a country heralded for its elegance.

Last Friday, on November 13, I went to my French class where we learned about the subjunctive (il est important que nous brossons nos dents!). I cooked oatmeal, wrote birthday cards, and Paris erupted into frightened chaos. Guns had fired in the Bataclan concert hall of an Eagles of Death Metal concert, along with bombings throughout the city, killing at least 130 people.The hateful act of terrorism scorches a sad chapter in the world's history, but humans have been sad before. The sickening feeling comes from the fact that it is becoming frighteningly easy to measure the passing of time not by how light illuminates the earth, but by how shadows shroud the globe in darkness.I went to a peaceful gathering in Washington Square Park to pay tribute to France, eavesdropping on the sad conversations held through clouds of sad cigarette smoke. Everything seemed sad. People stood sadly, conversed sadly, smoked sadly. Never, in my life, have I heard a sad French conversation take place in real life until that Friday. "Do you know anyone injured or dead?" one would ask another. "No, all safe, thank God. You?" So it went--and it was jarring.Understanding sadness in another language permanently changes the way one listens and reads and thinks, vous comprenez? It sharpens the vision, tightens the eardrums. Once you have heard those words of death and injury, the language and your history with it, changes. Tenses take on different meanings: the conditionnel is a call to action, the subjonctif is what we want to do, and the imparfait is the way we used to be. And French will never be the same to me.Il est necessaire que nous soyons gentils. It is necessary that we are kind.

From our Editors: LGBT Novel Recs from Allen Fulghum

Hi all, I’m Allen, one of West 10th’s prose editors. I’m a senior in Gallatin studying modernism, homosexuality and the First World War. When I sat down to make a short list of my favorite 20th century LGBT novels to share with you all, I realized that I’d chosen at least one representative of each decade from the 1910s to the 1960s—so here are six decades of LGBT literary history, condensed. 

Six decades, six brilliant LGBT novels

Maurice - E.M. Forster (1913)Written in 1913 but only published posthumously in 1971, Maurice was well ahead of its time in its nuanced depiction of a young man discovering and coming to terms with his sexuality. While Forster carefully examines the difficulties of identity and love, Maurice is ultimately founded on the belief that same-sex relationships have the capacity to be profound, beautiful and happy—a radical thesis for a novel written when men were still routinely arrested and imprisoned for having sex with other men.   

Orlando - Virginia Woolf (1928)Subtitled “A Biography,” Orlando was written as a paean to Woolf’s friend and erstwhile lover, the aristocratic Vita Sackville-West. With typical élan, Woolf transforms Sackville-West into the novel’s eponymous protagonist, a sex-changing immortal who begins as an Elizabethan nobleman and ends as a successful female author in ‘the present day’ (that is to say, 1928). Traversing three hundred years of Orlando’s life, Woolf relentlessly questions conventional notions of history, authorship, gender and sexuality.   Nightwood - Djuna Barnes (1936)Contained in a deceptively slim volume, Nightwood is a superbly stylized portrait of a doomed lesbian relationship in the bohemian Paris of the interwar years, explicated through the head-spinning speeches of Dr. Matthew-Mighty-grain-of-salt-Dante-O'Conner (who is just as campy as his name suggests). This modernist masterpiece was lauded by T.S. Eliot as “so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it.”    Notre Dame des Fleurs/Our Lady of the Flowers - Jean Genet (1943)Similarly to Nightwood, this novel renders the Parisian underworld in prose so rich and revelatory it practically creates a new class of literature. The lives and loves of its central characters—sex workers, trans women, and teenage murderers, all bearing charming monikers like Divine and Darling Daintyfoot—are unspooled by a capricious narrator who creates the world of the novel while masturbating in his prison cell (!!!).   The Charioteer - Mary Renault (1953)Renault, having worked as nurse at a British military hospital during the Second World War and later emigrated to South Africa to live with her female partner, was uniquely equipped to write this novel, which follows a British soldier who falls in love twice over as he recovers from a combat wound. With equal measures of heartfelt psychological insight and cutting social observation, The Charioteer struggles with the tensions between idealism and reality, individualism and community, and innocence and experience.  Another Country - James Baldwin (1962)An earlier novel of Baldwin’s, Giovanni’s Room, is often hailed as a masterpiece of gay literature, but while Giovanni’s Room is a claustrophobic investigation of one man’s psychology, Another Country seems to encompass an era. The characters are gay, straight, bisexual, questioning and in denial; white and black; working-class and middle-class and destitute and wildly successful. In a rhythm reminiscent of jazz, the novel traces the cast as they move in and out of each other’s lives, coupling and splitting up and getting back together, rising and falling in fortune—but always circling around the specter of a character who commits suicide at the end of the novel’s first act.

From our Editors: why Su Young Lee writes

Su Young Lee—this year’s prose editor here. Currently a sophomore who hopefully and finally narrowed it down to studying English Literature, Journalism, and Creative Writing (fun fact, I’m indecisive). Why (How) I Write   I see a man with his daughter on his lap, brushing her hair away from her small sleeping face as if they weren’t sitting in the middle of a crowded subway train. I like their intimacy and decide that maybe I’ll write about them someday. I never do. I sit in a café and eavesdrop on a job interview as the man becomes increasingly and amusingly anxious, visualizing his half-uttered sentences in the air, full of ellipses. I sit in my room on an especially bad day and decide that the imagined tragedy of how I feel will look good on paper, but all I can manage is jot down a few phrases that all sound like half-finished lines from terrible poetry—my poetry—and I throw the piece of paper away. You see, I like thinking about writing. Sometimes I convince myself I’m really a writer because all I can think about is how something will look on a page.     Then I come to my senses and decide that a writer is probably someone who actually writes. This is discouraging because writing is kind of hard. I plan characters, conversations, odd little phrases but when it comes to writing them down and filling in the gaps I find that I’m not a writer after all. Not a writer I’d like to be, or maybe I think I should be, the clichéd artist tortured by the task of translating their genius onto paper. The only thing I’m tortured by is my fear, laziness, lack of inspiration. While everything I see and hear and feel I think about writing down, it’s rare that I actually do.     This is partly why I sign up to a creative writing class. People say writing comes from the heart, the soul, from whatever other metaphorical body part, but honestly sometimes I just need someone to make me write because otherwise I never will. I have to make it inevitable because when I finally start writing I confirm what I suspected all along—that I hate writing.    This is the process of writing that I loathe: in bed. I don’t like sitting on a desk because it seems like I’m doing work, even though writing is really hard work. I put on some music before I decide that it’s distracting. I stare down at a blank piece of paper—or Word document. I tend to start with paper the first few times because I think writing by hand is romantic but I throw down my pen and hate myself finding I have more scribbles and crossed-out words than useable material. Blankness is encouraging—threatening—and maybe promising. The ugly blacked out words, however, are sad visual reminders of my failure that I’m too conceited to stand.     But if I hate it so much, why do I do it? Despite all the complaining and self-loathing, there’s something addicting about the adrenaline that comes with writing, beyond the effects of all the caffeine I consume. It’s the starting that’s hard, but once something is on the page the next words tumble after each other. I let myself ramble. When I finish the piece (the draft) it’s like finally letting out air after holding my breath. It’s at that moment when I close my laptop and go to sleep, because I conveniently write in bed, that I think I have found the reason I write. The feeling of satisfaction. There are a lot of other and often forgotten reasons too, like how I want to be eloquent but writing is the only way I can achieve it, how I like to hide behind the anonymity of words on paper, but how I also like the intimacy it provides. Sometimes I hate it because having to write something interesting is a reminder that my actual life is unexciting, but maybe I like that I can live through the pages I write. I don’t know if that’s sad. Sometimes I think being a writer means being sad—dragging up things that have happened, bad things, or things that never will.        Ultimately though, being a writer means writing. I may hate the act of writing but I love its effects, a similar relationship I have to cooking and actually eating the food. Hate the labour, if you will; devour the fruit. If I want to be a writer there’s really nothing else for me to do but write. That’s the one thing that all writers of all genres have in common—writing words, instead of just thinking about them. No matter how bad you think you are or how much you dislike the physical act of writing, writers write. So to all you aspiring writers: give yourself deadlines, make others give you deadlines, find some way to force yourself to put words on a page.

From our Editors: tiny tomorrow manifesto from Justin Hong

Hello! I'm Justin Hong, West 10th's poetry editor! I'm a junior studying Asian/Pacific/American Studies and Creative Writing. I am also all about dat anticolonialism, antiimperialism, antiracism, etc. tiny tomorrow manifesto/ Justin Hongafter Arundhati Roy  [tomorrow’s instruction manual is nestled inside this very if.]justplaintired, bonefizzy, and looking past yourself, you’re  learning how to make happy, freight happywith things that haven’t  happened yet. in  this sort of invention, the see-do poetics has amagazine you stuff with a dustcoated heirloom dream.  you tug on the trigger and the expired ammu-nition shatters, linguafranca barrel shatters. does  the handheld poetics shatter? it must. joy! but thatis all prepwork. for real step1 is: how to make rubble [hope] count?  

Advice.

Whuddup fools? I know I haven't posted on this blog for god knows how long, and who knows if anyone even reads it, but here's a cool tidbit I found on Steven Elliot's The Rumpus, which is a website ALL OF YOU SHOULD BE READING. Thanks to Elissa Bassist for compiling this list of pointers.***[Some of this is stolen. But I won’t tell you what because I want to impress you.]- First piece of writing advice: “Never take credit”–Stephen Elliott (pictured above)- Your writing should amuse you; if it doesn’t, there’s hardly any point to suffering this much or being this vulnerable or getting that addicted to [fill in the thing to which you got really addicted or hope to get addicted because it’ll give you “material”].- Writing is the opportunity to take the worst things that have happened to you and turn them into the most beautiful.- Do you want someone to tell you that your short story sucks and that you should be intellectually and environmentally safe by recycling it? TOO BAD. No one can tell you this. No one gets to tell you what’s trash/recyclable; you decide.- An MFA program will really help you if you have a high self-esteem problem.- If someone judges you through your writing, that someone is doing a bad job reading.- Write every day. If you can’t do that, do this: set an egg timer for 20 minutes; get a pencil and paper and have them touch; don’t lift your pen or pencil off the paper; write “I cannot write every day” on the piece of paper until you have something else to say; do this every day.- “The moment I stop being a reader is the moment I stop being a writer”–a famous writer said this to me once.- A conversation between two writers: Writer 1 says, “Blah blah blah,” and Writer 2 says, “Shut up and write.”- You can’t dismiss an experience because there have been worse experiences.- “No one who writes good fiction has an Internet connection”–poorly paraphrased advice from Jonathan Franzen.- If anyone has told you you shouldn’t write or that no one would read your writing if he/she had a choice or that you’re unloveable, please email me at elissa.bassist@gmail.com, and I will tell you that any person who craps on your dream is a tampon popsicle.***Write like a mother fucker.MC

Gilded Ink Writing Contest

To all you fiction writers: want to enter a short-story contest judged by acclaimed author David Rakoff? Here's your chance!The College Group at the Met and Selected Shorts, a short story performance series at Symphony Space and on public radio around the country, co- present another student writing contest.  Students are asked to write 500 words or less about a “private paradise,” in celebration of the upcoming exhibition, The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, opening on February 1, 2011.  Four winning entries, selected by the CGM committee, Symphony Space, and special guest judge David Rakoff (author of  Half Empty and  Don’t Get Too Comfortable and frequent contributor to NPR’s This American Life), will be read aloud at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday, February 4, 2011, recorded, and possibly aired later on Public Radio International.  The special event will be hosted by David Rakoff.Download the submission form here and start writing! GildedInk

Stress, Finals, and a prompt

Final papers, presentations, and tests are here...unfortunately. We're all stressed out and about to collapse because we're pulling all nighters (I know I am). It's around this time that we see students falling asleep in the library, their heads on the tables. I'm sure  some of us  have turned to more cups of coffee than usual (hmm..how many cups have you increased?).Try writing about how you're like during finals. Are you cranky or a bully to those around you? Do you look like one of the living dead? Do you fall asleep in front of the computer in the library? Are your eyes red as if you put blood colored contacts on? If you feel like you staying up all night to finish that essay isn't interesting enough and you've seen something more interesting or plain weird, then write about that. Have fun!

Personal essays, anyone?

Hi, everyone. I’m Farzana. I’m ecstatic to be a writer for this little blog. I hope you visit often and make sure you harass your friends to visit the blog as well. I’ll be ever so grateful.Well, now that we have dispensed with introductions, let me as you a question: do you like reading or writing personal essays? If not, I hope you continue to read because then you will benefit from it  (meaning you'll increase your knowledge on this topic). If you decide not to give me a few minutes of your time, then I hope you like my other posts better! For those of you who do have some positive feelings towards personal essays, I have a few tips on writing personal essays that I have learned from class and from guest speaker Paula Darrow, the articles editor of Self magazine (she’s the editor of the “self-expression" section).  I thought I should  pass on some of the knowledge I gained on to you.Writing a personal essay:-A personal essay can usually range from 800-2,000 words.- To pick a topic, you should start with a memory--- one that sticks out the most to you because it most likely affected you in some way. Your topic shouldn’t be your best experience or your worst experience. It should be an everyday experience with a larger significance behind it.- Your personal essay should not be an overview of your life (Naturally, you’re not write an autobiography here, are you?) The reason for not including your life from birth to present in a personal essay? Probably because you won’t be detailed enough in the amount of words a personal essay usually contains---that’s one reason among others.- You want your piece to be familiar yet surprising to the readers. I doubt readers will want to continue if they know what’s going to happen. For your essay, you don’t want to choose a situation that is predictable. Paula Darrow mentioned that being counter intuitive is a good thing, the more counter intuitive the better! In your essay, it’s good if you have a shift in perspectives and have some type of epiphany (I’m guessing it’s okay if you don’t; it depends on your story).- In terms of voice, it should be conversational.-  Also, it’s good to set up scenes and characters so the readers can imagine them and relate to them. It’s quite similar to fiction writing in regards to this.For those of us who prefer reading rather than writing them, check outwww.salon.com (it’s the life section).