↳ Gothic fiction, which is largely known by the subgenre of Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature and film that combines fiction and horror, death, and at times romance. Its origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole’s novel. The name Gothic, which originally referred to the Goths, and then came to mean “German”, refers to the (pseudo)-medieval buildings, emulating Gothic architecture, in which many of these stories take place.

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”

“Love isn’t soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.”

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!