Abstract:
Today, one of the most influential literary genres is the Gothic and it is influential in
lots of areas from music and architecture to cinema and fashion. As a term, Gothic
has a very broad meaning. It first emerged very early around 300 A.D. and it was a
name given to a tribe, which then evolved to an architectural style that can be first
seen in the 12th century. As a literary device it’s first seen in the 18th century and its
emergence is with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. The American pioneers
of the Gothic literature are Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who are the
two prominent characters that had given shape to the genre. In the present study, the
focus of the topic is on “Gothic” as a term, and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe’s
The Tell Tale Heart, (1843) and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown
(1835) will be analyzed within the context of Gothic literature and its conventions.
It will be given general information about Gothic and also analyzed the development
of this genre in introduction. It is shown when and how Gothic has been used in
literature in this study. In the second section of this thesis, it will be analyzed the
elements of the Gothic literature by dividing into three sections. Edgar Allan Poe and
his work “The Tell-Tale Heart” will be examined in terms of the elements of Gothic
literature in the third section. In the fourth section, It will be given information about
Nathaniel Hawthorne and his work “Young Goodman Brown” will be discussed by
taking gothic elements and also it will be examined by being used the information in
the introduction and second section.
In conclusion, It is given information about how Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel
Hawthorne use the Gothic genre in their works and they are compared with each
other in terms of using Gothic genre.
