Gothic literature is a subcategory of romantic literature that places great emphasis on emotion, but also utilizes terror themes and subjects to portray social issues or concepts. The movement is known to have first begun with Horace Walpole's novel The Castle of Otranto. The novel introduced romantic qualities such as heavy emphasis on medieval romantic storylines and being set in the medieval period, but used horror concepts like ancestral rituals, tyrannical villains, and monsters/mythos that provide terror to characters in order to carry the story.