The Influence of Gothic Literature on Gothic Music

  Gothic encompasses many genres of expression. Gothic artists speak out through the forms of literature, architecture, film, sculptures, paintings, and music. Many times, one genre of Gothic inspires another, creating fusing parallels between the two. In this way, each genre of Gothic rises to a more universal level, infusing into the much broader understanding of Gothic. Gothic writers, such as Mary Shelley, influence Gothic music as the same attributes of Shelleys style can be seen within certain pieces of music.

 Popular settings in Gothic music reflect the scary images of Gothic Tales such as Frankenstein. Gothic settings usually fall into the "wouldn't advise you to go at night by yourself" category. Shelley presents unpleasant settings including "darkness" in "churchyards," and "charnel houses" (Shelley 36-37). She describes corpses filled with worms, stormy skies and seas, and the gruesome physique of Frankenstein's monster and his deceased victims. Just the same, we find beds "degrading even to lice," (Bauhaus) "a forest" in the dark (The Cure), and fourteen-year old victims "pincushioned with sixteen hypodermic needles" (David Bowie). Gothic artists do not incorporate these settings to evoke cheer and lightheartedness. Varying in form from dilapidated buildings and dark weather to corpses and torture machines, Gothic settings definitely provide an appropriate stage for unsettling plots. Gothic musicians could not create such settings for music and maintain an audience without their ancestral trailblazers in Gothic literature (e.g.-Shelley) conjuring up such scenes in books.