Imagine for a moment that literature were capable of becoming a human being. Rather than living its life in chronological order as every human does (save for the case of Mr. Button, but all sorts of weird things happen in Cajun country), literature would be stuck as a perpetual teenager. It's like those kids you knew in high school that could never decide what group they were a part of. One day they were the smartest kids in class and when that became unpopular, they decided they wanted to be jocks though they didn't have an athletic bone in their body. They adapted despite it and were accepted for a time, but soon found that it wasn't who they wanted to be anymore so they bought a nice Nikon camera and took pictures of dandelions and allured every beautiful creature who walked past them. Soon it was too much work to paint things as lovely and the world as some sort of waterglobe with flowers and well wishes so they focused on the newly discovered idea that life is pain and painted their nails black, wore oddly tight pants and put so much eyeliner on that they looked like a raccoon had a few too many tequilas and woke up swearing that there were demonic voices in its waking unconsciousness. Yeah, literature would be pretty much like that.
http://sparkcharts.sparknotes.com/lit/literaryterms/section5.php
Literature goes through phases in an ever changing flux of characteristics while still maintaining its heart and soul. So...maybe literature is like Doctor Who? No? Maybe? I think so. Much like everybody has 'their Doctor' and everyone had the group in high school that they most identified with and spent excessive time believing that our little circle was the only group of people that would accept us. While I was never one of them (my Mom would've loved it/ killed me she's...weird) I was most fascinated and drawn to those Goth kids. I suppose I had it coming (Mom comes from Cajun country) but being drawn to the darkness is in my nature. The Gothic (literary) movement is the namesake of the popular teen angst ridden trend perpetuated by the color black. Which is fantastically appropriate considering the literary movement was marked by darkness and the supernatural. Where the 'emo movement came from I can't be sure and it didn't even exist when I was a teenager and I'm not even that old. I don't get it and I don't think it gets it either.
I think it's hilarious personally. Regardless, I find the Gothic literary movement to be beautiful and haunting. I suppose I'm a sucker for a movement that while holding tenatively to it's Romantic roots took a departure to the Dark Side. Gothic Fiction is considered to be primarily from 1764-1820 and featured writers that remain some of the greatest in the realm of horror; Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, and Edgar Allen Poe. The significance of this particular movement is that while it kept most of its roots in Romanticism it began the departure from the movement which made way for movements like Realism, Naturalism and Modernism. It also popularized the idea of the romanticized vampire and my goodness, where would this world be without that?
http://cheezburger.com/View/53733635
