Gothic nove 

has a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror. Called Gothic because its imaginative
impulse was drawn from medieval buildings and ruins, such novels commonly used such settings as
castles equipped with subterranean passages, dark battlements, hidden panels, and trapdoors. The vogue
was initiated in England by Horace Walpole’s immensely successful Castle of Otranto (1765). His most
respectable follower was Ann Radcliffe, whose Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Italian (1797) are
among the best examples of the genre. A more sensational type of Gothic romance exploiting horror and
violence flourished in Germany and was introduced to England by Matthew Gregory Lewis with The
Monk (1796). Other landmarks of Gothic fiction are William Beckford’s Oriental romance Vathek (1786)
and Charles Robert Maturin’s story of an Irish Faust, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). The classic horror
stories Frankenstein (1818), by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, are in
the Gothic tradition but introduce the existential nature of humankind as its definitive mystery and terror.

Historical novel, a novel that has as its setting a period of history and that attempts to convey the spirit,
manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic detail and fidelity to historical fact. The work
may deal with actual historical personages, as does Robert Graves’s I, Claudius (1934), or it may contain
a mixture of fictional and historical characters. It may focus on a single historic event, as does Franz
Werfel’s Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1934), which dramatizes the defense of an Armenian stronghold.

Modernism is often derided for abandoning the social world in favour of its narcissistic interest in
language and its processes.

In literature, the movement is associated with the works of (among others) Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia
Woolf, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Franz Kafka and Knut Hamsun. In their attempt to
throw off the aesthetic burden of the realist novel, these writers introduced a variety of literary tactics and
devices:

Picaresque novel usually a first-person narrative, Unlike the idealistic knight-errant hero, however, the
picaro is a cynical and amoral rascal who, if given half a chance, would rather live by his wits than by
honourable work. The picaro wanders about and has adventures among people from all social classes and
professions, often just barely escaping punishment for his own lying, cheating, and stealing.
The picaresque novel originated in Spain with Lazarillo de Tormes (1554; doubtfully attributed to Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza),
Cervantes also incorporated elements of the picaresque into his greatest novel, Don Quixote (1605, 1615).
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo’s La vida del buscón (1626; “The Life of a Scoundrel”) is a masterpiece of
the genre, in which the profound psychological depiction of a petty thief and swindler is underlain by a
deep concern for moral values. The first picaresque novel in England was Thomas Nashe’s Unfortunate
Traveller; or, The Life of Jacke Wilton (1594). In Germany the type was represented by H.J. von
Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (1669). In England the female picaro was revived in Daniel
Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722), and many picaresque elements can be found in Henry Fielding’s Jonathan
Wild (1725), Joseph Andrews (1742), and Tom Jones (1749) and in Tobias Smollett’s Roderick
Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751), and Ferdinand, Count Fathom (1753).

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional

response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm.
Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and older, present wherever religion is present, possibly—under
some definitions—the primal and primary form of languages themselves. The present article means only
to describe in as general a way as possible certain properties of poetry and of poetic thought regarded as
in some sense independent modes of the mind. Naturally, not every tradition nor every local or individual
variation can be—or need be—included, but the article illustrates by examples of poetry ranging
between nursery rhyme and epic.

Sonnet, The Petrarchan sonnet characteristically treats its theme in two parts. The first eight lines, state a
problem, ask a question, or express an emotional tension. The last six lines, the resolve the problem,
answer the question, or relieve the tension.
Haiku, unrhymed poetic form consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables
respectively. The haiku first emerged in Japanese literature during the 17th century. The term haiku is
derived from the first element of the word haikai and the second element of the word hokku . Today the
term haiku is used to describe all poems that use the three-line 17-syllable structure.
Originally, the haiku form was restricted in subject matter to an objective description of nature suggestive
of one of the seasons, evoking a definite, though unstated, emotional response.
Other outstanding haiku masters were Buson in the 18th century, Issa in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, Masaoka Shiki in the later 19th century, and Takahama Kyoshi and Kawahigashi Hekigotō in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the turn of the 21st century there were said to be a million
Japanese who composed haiku under the guidance of a teacher. A poem written in the haiku form or a
modification of it in a language other than Japanese is also called a haiku. In English the haiku composed
by the Imagists were especially influential during the early 20th century.
Epic, long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds, although the term has also been loosely used to
describe novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and motion pictures, such as Sergey
Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. In literary usage, the term encompasses both oral and written
compositions. The prime examples of the oral epic are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Outstanding examples
of the written epic include Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia in Latin, Chanson de Roland in
medieval French, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata in
Italian, Cantar de mio Cid in Spanish, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost