Gothic Horror in Maupassant's Short Stories

Abstract

This dissertation entitled "Gothic Horror in Maupassant Short Stories", shows that Maupassant's character's self-consciousness faces the life that does not show the sense of humanity and provokes horror. The individual mind of the character is arranged and ordered by the life of the senses. The minds of the characters regard their immediate environment as a problem to be solved, while the mind as sensibility is a reactor transforming and absorbing data into experience. This phenomena leads to the creation as a reactor to the Gothic stimulus. To show the horror Maupassant uses many basic elements in his stories and traces the encounter of the human subjects with the mysterious and horrifying supernatural experiences.