Gothic and Horror Vocabulary

Question 1

Weird

Answer 1

1. Weird Fiction hints that “something else is going on” which seems to break the rules of nature in a disturbing way.
2. Weird. Adjective.
   Definition:
   a. Suggesting something supernatural or uncanny.

Etymology:
From the Old English word for “Fate”, we can trace the word back to Proto-Indo-European word “wer”, meaning “to turn”.
Middle English used the term “Weird Sisters” to discuss the three goddesses of fate (Norns) who controlled human destiny. These sisters also show up as the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where they are portrayed as odd and frightening in appearance.

Question 2

Strange

Answer 2

1. Strange. Adjective.
   Definition:
   a. Unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand.
   b. Not previously encountered, alien.

Etymology:
From Old French “estrange”, meaning foreign, distant, or inhospitable, which comes from the Latin “extraneus”, meaning “external”. In Italian: “strano. In Spanish: “estraño”.
Originates in the word “extra”, which means “outside of”.

Question 3

Gothic

Answer 3

1. This word now has very little to do with the origin. Use our definition when speaking in class, but carefully read the Etymology for a story about how language develops.
2. Gothic. Adjective.
   Definition:
   a. In the style of the Dark Ages. Anything that is very gloomy and intentionally horrifying.

Etymology:
Originally, “Gothic” meant “of the Goth people”, an ancient Germanic tribe. The word originally seems to have mean “men” or “people”, but we are not quite sure. In 410, a tribe called the Visigoths sacked Rome. Later, a different tribe called the Vandals did the same thing (we get the word vandalism from vilifying this tribe).
By the 1600s (the 17th century), the word began to mean anyone Germanic. The word was then applied to an art style in Northern Europe during the middle ages. Originally, Italian artists used the word to make fun of the style, as it did not conform to their standards for art and architecture.
The next time the word changed was in the 19th century (the 1800s), when writers began to use European medieval settings to suggest horror and mystery.
The word added another meaning to describe a subculture that began in the 1980s, associated with a specific style and type of music.

Question 4

Horror

Answer 4

1. Horror. Noun.
   Definition(s):
   a. An intense feeling of fear, shock, or dismay.
   b. A thing causing a feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.
   c. A literary or film genre concerned with creating feelings of horror.

Etymology:
The Latin word “Horror” meant “dread, veneration, or religious awe”, though that usage was a use of figurative language describing an experience as inducing the feelings of “trembling (as with cold or fear)”. It could also mean “to shudder, [or feel a] chill”. The Latin word for those meaning was “horrere”, which meant “to bristle with fear”. In turn, this comes from the Proto-Indo-European root “ghers”, which means “to bristle”.
Note: This PIE root gave us the latin word “eris”, which can mean “hedgehog”.

Question 5

Unreliable Narrator

Answer 5

An unreliable narrator is someone telling the story whose account of what is happening cannot be fully believed.
They may not know that they are unreliable, or they may be intentionally hiding the truth to suit their own needs.’
Authors use unreliable narrators when one of their main foci is to thematically explore the various levels of truth.

Example = in Tangerine. we read everything from Paul’s diary. We do not know what any other character thinks or feels, unless Paul remembers to include their dialogue. We only know how he heard what other characters say. While Paul says that he can see what is going on better than others, he still seems to misunderstand or add his own biased opinion to the events in his life.

Example = in Dracula, the plot is moved forward in epistolary form. That means that we read letters, journal entries, and other writing of the characters in order to piece together the mystery of what happened. Because characters only see from their limited point of view, they miss important clues that would have stopped the main villain earlier.

Both examples are of unintentionally unreliable narrators. A major literary question this raises is if there are every any wholly reliable narrators.

Question 6

Single Effect

Answer 6

Also known as “Poe’s Single Effect” or “The Unity of Effect”, the idea was presented by Edgar Allen Poe in an essay we will read called “The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale”.
The idea of single effect can be explained this way:
Every element of a story should help create a single emotional impact.
Nothing in literature is an accident, and everything in a story that is really a story and not just something that happened moves towards a single emotional point.
In a mystery story this is a reveal of the killer. In a horrifying story, this is a realization of the truth about the monster. In a comedy, it is the eventual solution to the problem. In Shakespearean drama, it is the last act, where everyone dies (the Shakespeare ending). In early Muppet productions, it is when everything explodes (the Muppet ending).

Literature Analysis Cheat Code:
Short stories are always about one thing. Every element in the story is leading up to this emotional release. If you figure out that emotional moment the story depends on, then you can work backwards to fill in everything else a teacher will ask you about.

Question 7

Uncanny

Answer 7

1. Uncanny. Adjective
   Definition:
   a. Strange or mysterious, especially if the feeling is unsettling or creepy.

Etymology:
Originally meaning mischievous, it later meant “associated with the supernatural”. It originates from the prefix “un-“, meaning “not” with the addition of the word “canny”. The word “Canny” comes from the word “can”, meaning “knowing how to”. If you can do something, you are canny. Originally from “gno”, which is Proto-Indo-European for “to know”.
However, when we use the word Uncanny to describe strange or weird literature, there is another important piece of knowledge we must remember, from Sigmund Freud.

The Psychology (knowledge of the spirit) of the Uncanny:
Sigmund Freud wrote about the uncanny, specifically in literature and psychology, in an essay called "Das Unheimliche". He defines the uncanny as something familiar, yet undefined. 
In German, the word heimlich means something done in secret. However, the word is also related to the English word for "homely", meaning something that feels like it belongs at home. We also use "homely" to mean familiar, unattractive, or boring.
When we had the prefix "un-" to the German word, "unheimlich" means "something strange or mysterious, something uncanny". But, because it uses the "un-" prefix, we know that it also negates or is the opposite of "heimlich".
In other words, that which is familiar, but hidden, suddenly becomes revealed or un-hidden. Something is uncanny when we experience a double or hidden second meaning of something.

One application of this concept in the real world is the discussion of the uncanny valley. This theory suggests that we have a threshold where a robot or human-like object seems “almost too human”, and that threshold is where we become scared of the idea. Eventually, however, the object becomes so much like a human as to be indistinguishable, and we are not terrified anymore.