Poe and Brown

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Charles Brockden Brown wrote the first American Gothic novel, Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale and laid the foundation for American Gothic literature. Despite such a notable achievement, Brown is far from being the most well-known American Gothic writer. In fact, the most well-known American Gothic writer, and arguably the most well-known Gothic writer worldwide, is Edgar Allan Poe. It may be strange that the creator of American Gothic literature can be relatively easily dismissed when Poe is mentioned. The reason for this is that Poe refined and perfected American Gothic literature. Although Charles Brockden Brown was undoubtedly the Father of American Gothic Literature when he created Wieland or The Transformation, Edgar Allan Poe is the most influential Gothic writer, and has become more prominent than Brown, as can be seen in The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Tell-Tale Heart.
The first American Gothic novel is Charles Bockden Brown’s Wieland. Brown was the first American writer that decided to incorporate European Gothicism with American culture (White). To do this, he took the writing style of European Gothic literature and combined it with American places, people, society, and events, creating a new, eclectic genre of literature: American Gothicism. However, it was not nearly enough to use American culture to make Wieland relatable to Americans. What truly made it an American Gothic novel is that its plot was based on an actual murder. The story of the murder follows that “One winter's night in 1781, a farmer in upstate New York was reading his Bible when he heard (or thought he heard) a voice speak to him from out of the darkness . . . [Yates] went on to kill his wife, his two sons and his infa...

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...m represents his realization that his one true love, and his raison d’etre will exist “nevermore.” This truly beautiful yet somber theme culminates towards the end of the poem as the narrator exclaims “Take thy beak from out my heart, and take they form from off my door!” (Poe, Raven, 101). This line proves as essential to the poem as blood is to the brain for “The reader begins now to regard the Raven as emblematical - but it is not until the ver last line of the stanza, that the intention of making him emblematical of Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance is permitted distinctly to be seen” (Szumskie 147). This combined with the increasing tension as the raven says “Nevermore” with increasing significance has resulted in a denouement unlike any that has been seen before in Gothic literature, resulting in the most influential Gothic work of literature of all time.

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