[quote=Godslayer Jillian]Gothic literature is bullshit. I can respect William Faulkner (who is the big talented guy in gothic literature, not Poe)[/gothic]
You can't say that. You can believe that Faulker is more talented than anyone who ever wrote a gothic novel, but you can't call Faulkner 'the big talented guy in gothic literature' because his 'southern gothic' genre isn't so much a contribution of the 'gothic' literary tradition as a permutation on the form- saying that is tantamount to saying that Authur Miller is the 'big talented' greek tragedian because he experimented with elements of that style.
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Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian
but Gothic Literature is, simply put, plain old superfluous bullshit. Gothic literature was the big thing in the nineteenth century. Every materialistic bourgeois wanted to read the new edition of Varney the Vampire. Gothic Literature was very detailed, but so was Transcendentalist literature which wasn't to please the masses.
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Why is it that popularity or accessibility reduces the value of a novel? Of course there were awful entries into the catalogue of gothic fiction, but those that are still read and celebrated today- Wutering Heights, Frankenstein, A Turn of the Screw, Bleak House, even Dracula- are generally accomplished works. Varney, at any rate, doesn't constitute grounds on which to condemn the whole genre, as it's more a penny dreadful than a truly literary composition.
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Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian
The only reason Edgar Allan Poe wrote horror fiction was because he had to make the living, and that was what everyone wanted. It's an insult to remember Edgar Allan Poe as a horror fiction writer and the epitome of gothic literature.
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By that logic, we shouldn't acknowledge Shakespeare's sonnets because he wrote them for money, often after being hired by others and handed a topic about which he didn't care.
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Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian
He should be remembered because of his incomparable rhythm. He should be remembered for beginning the detective stories. He should be
remember for being a proto-science fiction writer. Never because he wrote the occasional story that gave the standard Victorian a pleasant, well-known, done-to-death (no pun intended) chill down their conformist spine.
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Since when is Poe's other work ignored? I don't believe the adventures of August Dupin were any less popular than his other tales, and they're certainly equally regarded today. Regardless, once again, the popularity of a composition's genre doesn't cheapen that work- by this rationale, No Country For Old Men shouldn't be an Oscar nominee because there are so many Westerns.