GOTHIC: TALES OF macabre, fantastic, and supernatural, usually set amid haunted castles, graveyards, ruins and wild picturesque landscapes. They reached the height of their considerable fashion in the 1790's and the early years of the 19th century (Oxford Companion to English , p. 405-06). Undoubtedly, there are Gothic elements to Mary Shelley's novel. She was familiar with the classics of Gothicism: Mrs. Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), M.G. Lewis's The Monk (1796) and William Beckford'sVathek (1786). In common with these Gothic tales, Frankenstein made use of the correspondence between theme, character and setting. One of the chief elements in