Gothic literature, like romantic literature, was at least in part a reaction against neoclassicism. In fact, Gothic literature is a form of Romanticism. It was popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, just like Romanticism. Gothic novels are usually set in castles, monastaries, spooky old mansions. They also usually involve ghosts or some form of the supernatural. They involve mystery and terror and the grotesque. The world of the Gothic is usually warped in some way.
The word was originally, at least as far as I know, applied to Medieval architecture. According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, the word was therefore associated with superstition and became the term applied to novels we now call Gothic.
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are classic examples from England, and Poe is an American Gothic writer. Also, in America, Southern Gothic became popular in the 20th century. Writers like Faulkner and Welty made it popular. Though Southern Gothic writers no longer set their stories in castles, etc., the mystery and terror, and particularly the grotesque, connect this offshoot to the original.
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