The supernatural in popular gothic romance

摘要

Over the last two centuries, the gothic romance has proven to be one of the most enduring of fictional formulas because it combines specific cultural perceptions with the more universal story of romance, thus allowing for large numbers of books to be produced which repeat the same basic elements. The gothic romance, as a fictional formula, also provides a means for making inferences about the cultural perceptions of a large group of people and for identifying differences in these perceptions from one cultural period to another. In discussing the changes or variations in one of the formula\u27s elements—the supernatural --this study indicates that there has occurred a movement inward away from external supernatural terrors toward those terrors which originate in the mind.