THE HISTORY OF HORROR

1. THE GOTHIC NOVEL:

• Who invented the gothic novel? The first known gothic novel is from the author Horace Walpole.

• What was the title of the first gothic novel? The Castle of Otranto
• When was it published? 1764

• Wich elements of horror do you remember? I remember  - The characteristic vocabulary in gothic novels we read.

- The horror video we watched about a pumpkin getting cut for Halloween.

- While watching the video, we compleated a text from it where a few words were missing. 

- The blog post I created where I searched for words I hadn't heard before along with a paragraph where I included those words.

- Another blog post I made where I talked about my favourite horror movie and my favourite scene.

- We read the story "The black cat" by Edgar Allan Poe and then completed a few questions about It.

- After reading "The black cat", we worked the vocabulary in the story and wrote down the words we didn't know.

- We watched a horror short in the class called "Lights out" and then commented If we found it scary or not.

- We also watched another short called "The smiling man" and then made a summary using the past tenses.

- We made groups of three or four students and started thinking about the script of a short film we had to create using all the material of the horror stories we had learnt.

- In the last class, we gathered together the groups we had created and started writing down all the ideas we could use in the horror short.

2. DISCOVERING LITERATURE:

Choose one of the topics of "discovering literature" and make a summary of It.

Dracula: vampires, perversity and Victorian anxieties

The characteristics of a vampire match the fears of the society of the late 19th century: fear of immigration, sexual promiscuity and moral degeneration. The vampire novel "Dracula" was published by Bram Stoker in 1897.

"Dracula" has lots of contrasts and shows old ways of thinking and also new ideas. Stoker uses the protagonist of the novel to portray all the fears that haunted the Victorian end of the 19th Century. Scientific rationality is put against folklore and superstition; old Europe against modern London, traditional notions are threatened by corruption and depravity.

The way Dracula moved through the crowded areas of the city without raising suspicions is a reference to the fear people had of untrammelled immigration because of It's the relation to higher levels of crime and ghetto communities. The novel also references Jack the Ripper's murders in 1888 and the location of Jacob's Island. The Ripper's murders had created panic in the press with the Jewish community. Because of the secretiveness of Jewish ghettos, It was thought they were the reason why the crimes had never been solved. The Jews were seen as having close relationships with those in their circle, probably also with the ones who had committed the crimes. "Dracula" closely shows those fears and they then lay behind the apparition of The Aliens Act in 1905.

3. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR STORY:

• Who is Edgar Allan Poe? He was a romance novel writer at the beginning of the 19th Century. He wrote poetry, novels and short stories. He mostly is known for his horror and fantasy-themed novels and is considered the father of psychological terror.

• When and where was he born? He was born the nineteenth of January 1809 and he passed away oh October seventh 1849 at the age of forty. 

• What was he famous for? He was mostly known for his horror and fantasy-themed novels and is considered the father of psychological terror. He was also one of the first science fiction writers.

• Did he get married? How did he die? Yes, he got married to Virginia Eliza Clemm. The way he died is still a mystery but there are many theories about the cause of his death. alcoholism, epilepsy, rabies, carbon monoxide poisoning...

• Some of Poe's most famous works are: "The Raven", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "Metzengerstein" and "The Gold Bug.

4. ALFRED HITCHCOCK:

• What's his nickname? "The master of suspense".

• What was his most famous horror film? According to many websites, some of his most famous films are Psyco, Vertigo, Notorious, The Lady Vanishes and The Birds.

• What was his main contribution to horror? He created many unique horror films which contained new and fresh ideas portraying, per example, "the thin line between sanity and insanity".

5. COMIC RELIEF:

• What is the comic relief and why is it used in horror films? Comic relief is a funny or less serious scene in a film in order to release some of the tension created by a dramatic scene. 

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