Gothic Novel or The Novel of Terror

Gothic novel or The novel of Terror gained great popularity in the closing decades of the eighteenth century. It owes its rise to the awakening of feeling and sentiment that marked these years and the revival of interest in the life and culture of the Middle Ages.
It marks a complete departure from the traditions of the realistic and didactic novels developed and established by Richardson, Fielding and others.

The Gothic novel deals with such blood-curdling incidents as murders in cold blood, the stalking of macabre ghosts, with incidents of physical torture and mental anguish and with scenes of solitary wanderings, cut off from light and human contact, with no other purpose than to strike terror in the readers and make them sweat all over. The scenes are laid in haunted castles, and abbeys with secret passages and subterranean vaults, grated dungeons and ruined piles. An atmosphere of mystery pervades these novels. The "terror" novelists make frequent use of magic, witchcraft and other supernatural agencies to intensify the scenes of mystery, and to stimulate the emotion of terror. They betake themselves to "far-off lands" and "fairy lands forlorn" in search of mystery and romance.

The Gothic novelists are the natural successors to the graveyard poets and nearly all the paraphernalia of graveyard poetry re-appear in their novels. By stimulating fear and probing the mysterious they took an important part in freeing the emotional energies, so long restrained by commonsense and good from. By playing on the deep psychological disturbances that occur when a man is brought face to face with the supernatural the most terrifying of all experiences- they provided the new thrill the people thrusted for. This made for immense popularity of Gothic novel during the period.

The major Gothic novelists are Horace Walpole , Beckford, Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, Clara Reve, Gregory Lewis etc.