What is Gothic Literature?
Gothic literature was born from the literary movement of Romanticism in the 18th and the 19th centuries; the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, was published in 1764, and was followed quickly by several others. Gothic stories and novels were written in Germany, France, England, and finally in the United States. Gothic tales represent a revolt against rationality; they cannot be enjoyed unless the reader is willing to "suspend disbelief" in the rational and accept strange and mysterious events.
Gothic literature embraces many of the common elements of Romanticism, but with a different emphasis. Gothic literature is dark, focusing on death, decay, and the supernatural. Terror, horror, and passion are staples of the genre . Settings run to the medieval, with the emphasis on ancient times and mysterious, foreboding locations. Castles are popular gothic settings. In gothic stories and novels, plot takes center stage; character development is not...
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inherent in the form. Most characters are stock characters, playing set roles to advance the compelling story.
What is the conceptual framework of Gothic literature?
The conceptual framework for the Gothic is the unconscious. The Gothic deals with the hidden, the supernatural, the frightening, the horrible, and the bizarre: all the parts of life we repress. Three psychological terms often associated with the Gothic are "unheimlich," "uncanny," and "doppelgänger."
What is unheimlich is unhomelike: strange, bizarre, and creepy. We tend to connect the Gothic with strange, often frightening settings: medieval castles, darkness, fog, swamps, isolated places, dungeons, and cellars.
The uncanny is unsettling or mysterious, both like and yet creepily not like the ordinary and everyday. Freud said that the corpse is the figure of the uncanny: it is both wholly human and wholly inhuman. It confronts us with what we don't want to face, our own mortality. Other uncanny objects are the backs of ourselves, as we don't usually see that aspect of our being—it can be startling, for example, to see a picture of our backs. Dolls are also emblems of the uncanny because they look human and yet aren't. Corpses and creepy dolls often play a role in Gothic literature.
The word doppelgänger means twin, and often Gothic literature features twinning, even if it is simply a person seeing their own face in the mirror in a startling way. The twin is often the reflection of ourselves that shows us something we don't want to see or ordinarily wouldn't see. An example of an eery twin is Roderick's twin sister Madeline in "The Fall of the House of Usher." She actually seems to be a corpse and then to come to life.
Essentially, the Gothic puts us in touch with those parts of ourselves and our world that the rational mind wants to exclude or the psyche wants to repress. Gothic literature is often understood as a response against the rationalism of the Enlightenment, a way to explore the unconscious mind and/or that which frightens and repels us.
What is Gothic literature?
English Gothic literature began in 1765 with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, which contains all of the characteristics now thought to encompass the genre. A work does not have to contain all the following elements to be viewed as gothic, but it must have a healthy combination of them:
-horrifying events or the threat of such
-a castle, preferably haunted (in the case of "Mariner," feel free to
substitute a boat)
-dungeons, catacombs, crypts, etc.
-labyrinths, dark corridors
-extreme weather and/or landscapes
-a hero whose hidden identity is not revealed until the end
-magic/the supernatural/curses
-a heroine who needs rescued alot
-shadows/moonbeams/strange sources of light
A sub-genre known as Southern gothic also deserves to be mentioned, with many of the same characteristics transposed to Old South settings, but I assume by your reference to "Mariner" that you will be dealing with the English gothic.
Hope this helps!