The Gothic, as a category of representation, tends to evoke a loose assortment of images, themes, and narrative conventions associated with its presence in various textual or cultural contexts. How these conventions, themes, and images are understood is often determined by qualifying terms that designate particular types of Gothic according to their engagement with a number of factors including certain historical periods (such as Victorian Gothic), specific cultural milieus (such as suburban Gothic), or particular national and regional narratives (such as Australian Gothic, Scottish Gothic, Canadian Gothic, New England Gothic, Caribbean Gothic and Maori Gothic). In such instances, where the Gothic is adapted to particular environs or eras, its connection to its original form is loosened, with new variations on classical ideas establishing themselves in reinterpreted Gothic landscapes. Such is the case with the American Gothic. In Gothic America, Teresa Goddu notes that inquiries into the defining characteristics of the Gothic become confused when accompanied by the modifier “American” since in an American context the Gothic lacks the self-evident validity and qualifying imagery of its British counterpart (1997, 3). Indeed, the British Gothic, which allegedly emerged in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, drew on themes and imagery far removed from an American setting. Medieval in its iconography, Walpole's novel was driven by themes of cursed heritage, ancestral haunting, decay, entrapment, and architectural dereliction, providing the foundation for a Gothic style that subsequent works of popular Gothic fiction such as Frankenstein or Dracula faithfully maintained and emulated.