Descending from a melding of historical, architectural, and literary forces and a growing curiosity about nonrational states of mind, the Gothic revival in the arts commenced in the British Isles during the mid-eighteenth century. It was only later that German authors, who devoured British Gothic works, emulated those models and adopted Gothicism as their own. When interest in and criticism of German literature in turn sprang up in the Anglo-American literary world in the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, many forgot about the precise origins for contemporary terror literature. If critics and general readers who had been nurtured on neoclassic principles—which emphasized order, reason, and balance—directed negative criticism toward what they dismissed as vulgar “Germanism,” many creative writers derived much from the Gothic mode. Irony and hostilities notwithstanding, works inspired by the Gothic tradition were published in Great Britain and America, starting with a great flourishing in the 1790s, and the legacy remains fruitful. For example, many current romance novels and horror tales, among others, continue to refashion techniques and themes that originated long ago.

In the first Gothic novel—Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, subtitled “A Gothic Story” and published anonymously in 1764, then with Walpole’s name revealed the next year—we encounter vicious pursuit of innocence (and innocents) for purposes of power, lust, or money. These motives drive Prince Manfred, grandson of the usurper of the throne of Otranto in medieval Italy, who is eager to wed his son Conrad to lovely young Princess Isabella, to secure family succession to the throne. Conrad dies mysteriously, however, crushed by a gigantic black helmet that appears in the palace courtyard. Manfred rapidly proposes to have his own marriage annulled and marry Isabella himself, hoping that a younger wife will produce a son to secure succession. Revolted by Manfred’s obvious lust, Isabella flees through dark corridors and subterranean passages in the eerie old castle, aided by a mysterious young man, Theodore, who assists her escape to sanctuary in the neighboring monastery. Manfred’s rages against the young pair or anyone else who seems to thwart his will, his ill treatment of his docile wife, Hermione, his murdering his own daughter by mistake—all precede the clearing away of mysteries in family and political identities. Supernatural touches increase the characters’ anxieties: The giant helmet portends tragedy; a portrait of Manfred’s ancestor becomes animated and seems to disapprove of his descendant’s behavior; disaster and gloom hover over all. Lust, near-incest, violence, brutality—all linked with family mysteries and identities over which the strange old decaying castle seems to preside—create overwhelming terror and fear. The comic speeches and actions of menials provide comic relief to the more grim sections in the story.

Walpole’s use of the castle and the nearby monastery as backdrops is a natural outgrowth of the contribution of the British cultural heritage to literary Gothicism. In the 1530s, King Henry VIII broke from Roman Catholicism because of circumstances akin to Manfred’s: Henry wanted a son to solidify his line’s succession within the British monarchy. His attempts came to naught, with tragedy resulting for most of his six wives. Henry also dissolved many British religious centers, an action that led to widespread sackings: Abbeys, churches, convents, monasteries, and cathedrals were ruined. By the mid-eighteenth century, such ruins came to symbolize transience in human aspirations. The inhabitants of such places, whose robed, hooded figures readily suggested ghosts or demons, provided origins for additional supernaturalism in literary Gothicism. Since the clerics had at one time held political as well as religious status, here were perfect targets for British anti-Catholics of a later day to cast as villains, especially since clerical celibacy also suggested unnatural sexuality. Appropriately, many British Gothic works were set in southern continental Europe, the seat of continuing Roman Catholic power, where villainous foreign policies and secretive character types would contrast markedly with the British sense of open political, social, and religious life.

By the time of The Castle of Otranto, much British poetry had become imbued with what we now call “graveyard” topics—short lives, the grave (and its physical manifestations: gravestones, mausoleums, etc.) as symbolic of instability in the human condition, and the eeri ness of churchyard environs. We need not wonder that Walpole’s imagination should have turned to similar themes and settings. The Castle of Otranto also owes a debt to the ranting, lustful, power-mad villains in Renaissance revenge tragedies. Walpole’s novel continues to puzzle readers, however, because we are never certain whether he wrote with absolute seriousness or if there is a smile just beneath the sensationalism. Thus, the origins of literary Gothicism yield both terrifying and humorous substance.

Although not every Gothic work includes a haunted castle, or lust, or money madness, most call up anxieties and power plays leading to tragedy—sometimes with supernatural interventions, sometimes with warped characters who move within eerie architectural or natural settings, which contribute to emotional unsettledness and an overall gloomy atmosphere. The recurrent situation in Gothic literary tradition is that of an alienated protagonist in an alien world. Some later writers present gory details of physical sufferings in repellant surroundings (horror); some others eschew the descriptions of physical tortures, preferring to delineate psychological effects of mysterious threats and oppressions (terror).

American authors experimenting with Gothicism had to either employ European settings and characters or adapt the Gothic to American subject matter. The person mainly responsible for this transformation was William Dunlap, the so-called father of American drama, who composed several Gothic plays during the 1790s. Three were European in substance, but André (1798), set during the American Revolution, adapted the overwrought psychology of a renowned wartime British spy captured by Americans, condemned to death, and awaiting execution. As in many other Gothics, war constituted a perfect foil to uncertainties in physical and emotional life.