White Rose of Avalon

Gothic

  • My Personal Ranking of American Horror Story Seasons

    In honor of the tenth season of American Horror Story finally arriving next month (and the companion series American Horror Stories premiering this month) I have decided to rank the seasons worst to best (in my opinion)!    I have given a lot of thought to how I rank each season.    I have enjoyed…

  • Immortality: Gift or Curse?

    Poe, Dickinson, Polidori, Stoker, Shelley, and Le Fanu.    All of these authors have written about immortality, both as a gift and as a curse.   The nineteenth century was a big time for supernatural tales, as a reaction to all of the technological advancements. The curse of immortality has been used in literature featuring…

  • Idealizing Mortality: Doomed Women in Gothic Fiction

    Women in Gothic fiction in the nineteenth century are known for being doomed.   Poe himself said that nothing was as poetic as a dying woman.   It is a very interesting concept of the romanticism of death.   Death and beauty are linked, and this is shown in the Death and the Maiden motif…

  • The Green Ribbon

    For today’s post I would like to discuss the short story The Green Ribbon, which is found in the children’s story collection In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories.   The Green Ribbon is the only truly scary tale in the whole collection, which was written by the same author of the Scary…

  • My Top Five Edgar Allan Poe Inspired Films

    Today I will be counting down my top five films inspired by either the life or the works of Edgar Allan Poe!    As a huge Poe fan I had to do some thinking to narrow it down, and to pick an order. Number 5: Twixt (2011) ~This mystery ghost film starred Val Kilmer and…

  • Ligeia: Poe’s Masterpiece

    Today I would like to focus on my absolute favorite tale by Edgar Allan Poe.    Ligeia is a beautiful, romantic, and dark tale!   Poe actually invented the name Ligeia for this tale.   If you are curious the name is pronounced Lie-G-a, but is sometimes pronounced Ledge-E-a.   Personally I prefer the first…

  • Coleridge’s Gothic Influence

    For today’s post I would like to look at the influence of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge on other writers!   Christabel is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.    This poem was in fact never fully finished, but was nevertheless is one of Coleridge’s masterpieces. This poem was influential to later authors, such…

  • Heathcliff as Byronic Hero

    Anyone who knows me knows that I adore classic literature, and my favorite classic novel is Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights!    In honor of this today’s post is devoted to the character of Heathcliff.   Heathcliff is often named as a Gothic Villain, and he does bare many markers of the term, but he better…