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Thesis for the american gothic
Thesis for the american gothic
Literature the gothic genre
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2.1 American Gothic Literature
“From the turn of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century and the beginnings of a distinctive American literature, the Gothic has stubbornly flourished in the United States” (Savoy 167). American Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic literature in general, so it naturally shares many of its characteristics. The big difference however, lies in influence and concepts. “There is no doubt that the Gothic as a mode or genre, much like many of its representative texts, engenders feelings of dread and confusion among readers due to its inherent ambiguity” (Walsh 19).
As I established before, this literary genre is highly influenced by the idea of ruins and antiquated buildings and thus bases its fiction on the demolishing of civilized society. The plot of these tales is therefore most certainly going to include themes of abuse or degradation. Its historical background has to be taken into account here though, for the Western
When analyzing texts that belong to this particular kind of fiction, one should note “that the politically independent nation is almost as old as the genre itself, especially if we accept the common critical assumption that the literary Gothic came into being with the publication of Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764” (Walsh 20).
Southern Gothic tales may not be set in ruined castles, mysterious or aristocratic dynasties that were used by European Gothic writers, but they nevertheless had their own source of blackness, which was not identified as evil but “racial blackness” (Lloyd-Smith 45). Heyejin claims that the early American Gothic repeatedly demonized the racial ‘Other’ and that Gothic images have been mostly “employed in American literature to expose the horrors of slavery, especially in antebellum slave narratives and novels”
Gothic Literature was a natural progression from romanticism, which had existed in the 18th Century. Initially, such a ‘unique’ style of literature was met with a somewhat mixed response; although it was greeted with enthusiasm from members of the public, literary critics were much more dubious and sceptical.
They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. If that is true, I would have to say that many people praise American Gothic every day. It is parodied in the political cartoons of the newspapers around the country and on television as well. Almost anyone could recognize the solemn couple from having been printed on everything from coffee mugs to mousepads. Grant Wood’s classic tale of a farming family in rural Iowa has truly
Ringe, Donald A. American Gothic: Imagination and Reason in Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Lexington KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982.
The term ‘Gothic’ conjures a range of possible meanings, definitions and associations. It explicitly denotes certain historical and cultural phenomena. Gothicism was part of the Romantic Movement that started in the eighteenth century and lasted about three decades into the nineteenth century. For this essay, the definition of Gothic that is applicable is: An 18th century literary style characterized by gloom and the supernatural. In the Gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, a wide range of issues are explored. Frankenstein represents an entirely new vision of the female Gothic, along with many other traditional themes such as religion, science, colonialism and myth.
Gothic literature was developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth century of the Gothic era when war and controversy was too common. It received its name after the Gothic architecture that was becoming a popular trend in the construction of buildings. As the buildings of daunting castles and labyrinths began, so did the beginning foundation of Gothic literature. The construction of these buildings will later become an obsession with Gothic authors. For about 300 years before the Renaissance period, the construction of these castles and labyrinths continued, not only in England, but also in Gothic stories (Landau 2014). Many wars and controversies, such as the Industrial Revolution and Revolutionary War, were happening at this time, causing the Gothic literature to thrive (“Gothic Literature” 2011). People were looking for an escape from the real world and the thrill that Gothic literature offered was exactly what they needed. Gothic literature focuses on the horrors and the dark sides to the human brain, such as in Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein. Gothic literature today, as well as in the past, has been able to separate itself apart from other types of literature with its unique literary devices used to create fear and terror within the reader.
Tennessee Williams described Sothern Gothic literature as a style that captured “the underlying dreadfulness in modern experience” (Hemmerling). The literature intended to reveal the social issues surrounding the time period. Features of this literature, “includes situations and places as well as unsavory characters that are often racist, religious fanatic, egotistical or self-righteous” (Kullmer). This description of Southern Gothic literature also fits other genres of post Civil War American literature. Works by authors such as Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Sui Sin Far, Henry James, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston and Earnest Hemingway also contain characters, situation, and places revealing similar social controversies displaying racism, sexism, and egotistical behavior.
Southern gothic is a type of literature that focuses on the harsh conflicts of violence and racism, which is observed in the perspective of black and white individuals. Some of the most familiar southern authors are William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Cormac McCarthy. One author in particular, Flannery O’Connor, is a remarkable author, who directly reflects upon southern grotesque within her two short stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Revelation.” These two short stories are very similar to each other, which is why I believe that O’Connor often writes with violent characters to expose real violence in the world while tying them in with a particular spiritual insight. The first short story that O’Connor refers to with southern grotesque and violence is in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
I offer by way of introduction to the Gothic literary world an extract taken from Ann. B Tracy’s book The Gothic Novel 1790-1830: Plot Summaries and Index Motifs:
Southern gothic is a genre that focuses on grotesque themes while including supernatural elements and damaged characters.”The grotesque” is a common character whose negative qualities highlight unpleasant aspects in southern culture. Specifically southern gothic includes characters archetypes such as the innocent and an off-kilter character. Southern gothic comments on southern culture and its moral shortcomings such as social issues like racism. The setting is a very important aspect of the genre as it sets the tone and the mood of the story. The Southern Gothic movie, The Green Mile, uses Southern Gothic elements such as archetypes, “the grotesque”, and setting to establish the binary theme of Black vs. White, in order to highlight and
Gothic Literature highlights the contrast of power and it is always
Word by word, gothic literature is bound to be an immaculate read. Examining this genre for what it is could be essential to understanding it. “Gothic” is relating to the extinct East Germanic language, people of which known as the Goths. “Literature” is defined as a written work, usually with lasting “artistic merit.” Together, gothic literature combines the use of horror, death, and sometimes romance. Edgar Allan Poe, often honored with being called the king of horror and gothic poetry, published “The Fall of House Usher” in September of 1839. This story, along with many other works produced by Poe, is a classic in gothic literature. In paragraph nine in this story, one of our main characters by the name of Roderick Usher,
In what follows, my research paper will rely on an article by Kathy Prendergast entitled “Introduction to The Gothic Tradition”. The significance of this article resides in helping to recapitulate the various features of the Gothic tradition. In this article the authoress argues that in order to overturn the Enlightenment and realistic literary mores, many of the eighteenth century novelists had recourse to traditional Romantic conventions in their works of fiction, like the Arthurian legendary tales (Prendergast).
Southern Gothic Literature is a subgenre of Gothic fiction writing, which takes place in the American South. The Southern Gothic style is one of that employs the topics such as death, bizarre, violent, madness, and supernatural. These tools are used “to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South (Wikipedia).” The view of the South which is self-identified as the “national” or “American” view is basically a colonial Romance, with the rest of the nation identified with the forces of the light and the South with the forces of the darkness (Wacker 107).The authors of Southern Gothic typically use damaged characters to make their stories better, and to show deeper meanings of unpleasant Southern characteristics. These characters are diverse from society due to social, physical or mental disabilities.
Brown’s perspective on the European fiction that, while gothic and therefore focusing on “superstition and exploded manners, gothic castles and chimeras”, merely appealed to popular taste and as such held the consensus that reading fiction was an idle pastime (Elliot, ix). Brown’s aim was to change the general consensus of fiction reading and create a genre that challenged readers to use their full intellectual capacity. He did this in Wieland through not only the dialectic, but also through allusions to the climate of the world he was living in. If we are to take Wieland as a representative for the American gothic, then the genre must achieve that goal.
Gothic writing is related to a style of fiction that deals with the mysterious or grotesque; Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Ministers Black Veil” is classified as a dark romantic work because it contains the themes of sin, guilt, and looking at the darker side of human life. He had trouble from his early life, his dreary adulthood, and his fascinations with common man. His early and more unsuccessful work is from his silent and productive years.