Friday, April 3, 2009

Nonfic: Kristine Kathryn Rusch clarified "gothic novel" & its descendants

In this somewhat longish post at JBU, #18 (April 2009), she talks of "gothic novel" trope of fiction & its many avatars.

What struck me was the familiarity of the tropes with several Hindi movies. And a personal preference I didn't realize I had: I can stand only those stories of this kind that evokes the emotion of what she calls "understated unease" as opposed to outright horror feature of original form of "gothic novel", & even there I prefer local versions to English ones.
Note: One of better stories that evokes "understated unease" is Eric Frank Russell's "Rhythm of the Rats". But it clearly is not "gothic novel" class.

What she left unstated was that local folklore tends to get mixed in these tropes, & perhaps drives local tastes? In raw unadapted form, these tropes probably don't work as well across cultures.

I don't recall having heard a name attached to this trope in India - at least not at the level of granularity she talks of. Anyone would care to enlighten on local variants?

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