WI: Castle of Otranto Was Never Written

Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto created the Gothic horror genre which was hugely popular during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. How might European and North American literature develop if it didn't exist?

Would "sentimental novels" like Pamela become the dominant genre, or something else, like a revival of chivalric romances?
 
No responses yet? I'd think someone would be interested in a literary POD. . .

(It was inspired by reading Eaton Barrett's The Heroine, a great parody of those silly Gothic novels.)
 
I have read it but not too many of its contemporaries, so I don't know if I can comment. Good to see a literary PoD though!

Here's a proposal: Walpole's biggest legacy is not the "Horror", but the "Gothic" - the medieval manor trappings. Someone is bound to take romanticism to its horrific extremes; how about romantic horror being married to Orientalism, for instance?
 
I have read it but not too many of its contemporaries, so I don't know if I can comment. Good to see a literary PoD though!

Here's a proposal: Walpole's biggest legacy is not the "Horror", but the "Gothic" - the medieval manor trappings. Someone is bound to take romanticism to its horrific extremes; how about romantic horror being married to Orientalism, for instance?


Are you thinking of something like the Fu Manchu series a few hundred years early? Gothic fiction often has anti-Catholic tendencies in OTL (see The Monk; or the superstitious servants in Udolpho). They might be replaced with other kinds of prejudice in your proposed TL. . .
 
Are you thinking of something like the Fu Manchu series a few hundred years early? Gothic fiction often has anti-Catholic tendencies in OTL (see The Monk; or the superstitious servants in Udolpho). They might be replaced with other kinds of prejudice in your proposed TL. . .

Yes, precisely.

I looked up The Castle of Otranto on Wikipedia where its creative lineage from Hamlet was noted. Can someone else revive the atmosphere and themes of Shakespeare's play?
 
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