The Difference Between Modern Horror and Gothic The

The Difference Between Modern Horror and Gothic “The difference between gothic and horror is mood. Horror wants to scare you. Horror wants to creep you out. Horror wants to revolt you, to shake you up, to attack your preconceptions. Gothic is all about mood. The mood is misty. Things are ominous. Things move very slowly. The idea is you are dislocating the world that the person viewing it is living in and taking them to somewhere subtly more menacing. The world of a horror film – and some horror films can obviously be gothic – is a world that is out to get you. It will destroy you. You may survive a horror film if you are lucky but basically you are in a random world that means you harm. Gothic world is not a random world that means you harm. The Gothic world has a brain behind it. The Gothic world has a mind. It is moving slowly and, really, you should come away from a good piece of gothic experience just feeling that the world is perhaps a more threatening place. But still one that is capable of being understood. There is no random chaos and slaughter in a gothic”. - Author, Neil Gaiman

Gothic Traits in Frankenstein • The characters bridge the mortal world and the supernatural world • The monster appears wherever Victor Frankenstein goes. (An unexplainable communication) • The monster moves with superhuman speed with

Romanticism vs Romance The difference between romanticism and romance is that romanticism holds a romantic quality, spirit or action while romance deals with characters who are romantic (a character like those of the knights in a mythic romance).

What is Romanticism? • A reaction to the Age of Reason and Classicism (logic, order, balance, rationality) • It is concerned with the subjective, irrational, imaginative, personal, spontaneous, emotional and the sublime • Summarise: The Romantics believed control was dangerous and nature was comforting and should be studied. They also had a preoccupation with the ‘genius’, the hero, and the exceptional figure. They focused on his passions and inner struggles. They viewed the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures