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The term Gothic conjures up images of frightened women, graveyards, and haunted castles in the mist, popular settings for horror films. But is this what Gothic means? The Oxford Companion to English Literature defines Gothic as, “Tales of the macabre, fant ....

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.... hole which finally absorbs history into its own emptiness” (Bernstein 333). Gothic fiction is, quite simply, man taking a “walk on the dark side.” There is, undeniably, no novel which epitomizes the popular Gothic structure more than Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s early 19th-century masterpiece, (actually entitled, , or the Modern Prometheus). According to Greek mythology, Prometheus is a hero who steals fire from the heavens to serve man, but he is ultimately punished by the mighty Zeus, who chains him to a rock, where a vulture feasts on his liver. Inexplicably, however, the liver grows back each night. This reference abo ....