The Romantic Period

Or “The Age of Romanticism”

The Romantic Period
• Changes in society, beginning in the 18th century and continuing
into our own time, underlie the romantic movement. It starts as a
reaction against the intellectualism of the Enlightenment, against
the rigidity of social structures protecting privilege, and against
the materialism of an age which, in the first stirring of
the Industrial Revolution, already shows signs of making workers
the slaves of machinery and of creating squalid urban
environments.
The Gothic Movement
• a literary movement that focused on ruin, decay, death, terror, and chaos, and
privileged irrationality and passion over rationality and reason, grew in
response to the historical, sociological, psychological, and political contexts of
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

• This style of fiction began in the mid 1700s with a story titled, The Castle
of Otranto (in 1764), by Horace Walpole.
The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole
• This story was about a doomed family and is filled with
death, desire, and intrigue. This story is considered to be the
first of the Gothic fiction tales, since it encompassed many
of the characteristics of the genre.

• The term Gothic actually originated as a term belittling the

architecture and art of the period, which was dark, decaying,
and dismal.
Essential Elements to the Gothic Novel
1. Mystery & Fear
2. Unnerving Atmosphere
3. Supernatural and Paranormal Activity
4. Omens & Curses
5. Nightmares
6. Emotional Distress
7. Villain
8. Anti-Hero
9. Romance
10. Damsel-in-Distress
SOURCES:
• http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?histo
ryid=aa73#ixzz63bzR86kV
• http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?histo
ryid=aa73
• https://www.invaluable.com