GOTHIC TALES

With Halloween fast approaching, and this being our Book Tuesday, I thought today to give you a Gothic novel/story quiz, which is in keeping with both occasions. Halloween, October 31st, is the last night of the Celtic year and is the night associated with witchcraft, fairies, elves and wicked spirits. In countries where the Celtic influence is strong, customs surrounding Halloween are still current and relate to pagan rituals celebrating the beginning of the Winter cycle. Tales of witches and ghosts are told, bonfires are lit, fortune-telling and mumming are practiced. Masquerading is the order of the night, making of jack-o-lanterns and the playing of games pass the hours pleasantly. Bobbing for apples in a tub of water is an age-old custom. These pagan practices have been incorporated into the Christian tradition through association with All Saints’ Day on November the first.

Gothic literature has often been criticised for its sensationalism, melodramatic qualities, and its play on the supernatural. However, the genre dominated English literature from its conception in 1764 with the publication of “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole to its supposed demise in 1820. These novels drew many of its dark and romantic images from the graveyard poets, who intermingled a landscape of vast dark forests with vegetation that bordered on excessive, ruins with rooms concealing horrors, monasteries, windswept castles and a forlorn character who excels at the melancholy. Although the Gothic novel influenced many of the emerging genres, like romanticism, the outpouring of Gothic novels started to ease by the 1820s. The genre has had several revivals, including a very recent one sparked by the popularity of New Age themes. This most recent revival (sparked by a Supernaturalism reaction against the growing Science and Technology developments of the late 20th century) seems to mirror the circumstances that created the genre (a Romantic reaction against the rationality and logic of the Age of Reason).

Now, for our quiz:
I have selected 10 important “Gothic” novels or short stories and have represented their titles as an image that may be a direct illustration of that title or a distinct allusion to it.
Your task, should you wish to accept it is to identify all 10 and firstly send me a message with the title and author of the work and then comment here telling me you are participating.
The winner is the first person who gets all ten correct (or the most correct!) and he or she will receive a prize!

For details see my 360 blog.