![]() ![]() Thus, it was and continues to be described as a reactionary genre devoted to returning repressed societal fears to our attention so we might expel them. Gothic literature arose at the end of the eighteenth century during a time of social, political, and economic unrest. The crumbling walls of Kenilworth Castle against the backdrop of a stormy sky filled with birds in flight evokes the gloomy aesthetic of early Gothic fiction ( Tillibean). For the next several decades, authors as varied as Ann Radcliffe, Sir Walter Scott, and Jane Austen would utilize various aspects of the genre to different ends, each manipulating Gothic’s stock elements to fit his or her unique aim. ![]() Carol Margaret Davison builds on Spector’s theory, pointing out how “as the vast majority of Gothic works illustrate, the component parts of this untidy and undying monster have been variously, regularly and successfully reconfigured to promote vastly different political and aesthetic ends and to speak to a broad cross-section of audiences and eras” (57). Within the first chapter, readers encounter a prophecy, the supernatural, a beautiful virgin, a dutiful, abandoned wife, a persecuted maiden, ridiculous servants, a young, handsome peasant, and a ghost, all set within the labyrinthine corridors of the eponymous castle. In the words of Robert Spector, the ensuing events, “provided all the machinery of the genre its setting, theme, and subversive subject matter remained the stock material of the Gothic whatever changes it underwent” (9). Manfred, having only this one heir and a wife incapable of bearing additional children, immediately sets upon Isabella with the aim of taking her as his own wife. ![]() Lloyd-Smith here defines the gothic as a "reactionary form" that "explores chaos and wrongdoing in a movement toward the ultimate restitution of order and convention" (5).Ĭhapter 1, "What is American Gothic," is then followed by two brief chapters consisting of a timeline of the growth and development of the American Gothic and a chapter entitled "How to Read American Gothic." The timeline includes not only the dates of publication for American gothic works, but.In the opening pages of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), Manfred, whom readers will come to recognize as a definitive Gothic villain, sends a servant to fetch his son, Prince Conrad, who is to marry the Lady Isabella however, the servant discovers Conrad crushed to death beneath an impossibly large, black-plumed helmet. After a brief two-page introduction that foregrounds the importance of repetition to the genre, both in the sense of later authors working within an established generic tradition and in the sense of the return of the repressed, the book begins with a seven-page overview of the American gothic that introduces general aspects of gothic literature, such as its emphasis on the sublime, the distinction between terror and horror (which is poorly explained), and its focus on extreme emotional states, as well as specifically American cultural anxieties that influenced the development of the American gothic including the frontier experience, the legacy of Puritanism, anxieties about radical democracy, and issues of racial difference. Alan Lloyd-Smith, who is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at the University of East Anglia and who is the author of Uncanny American Fiction: Medusa's Face (Macmillan 1989) and co-editor with Victor Sage of Gothick: Origins and Innovations (Editions Costerus-Rodopi 1994), is an established scholar of the American gothic and a good choice to author the text.Īmerican Gothic Fiction more or less follows the series template outlined above. (The other two currently out are on Native American Literatures and Irish Fiction, with forthcoming titles on Fantasy, Horror, Crime Fiction, and Science Fiction.) These relatively short texts (exclusive of annotated bibliography, glossary, and index, American Gothic Fiction clocks in around 160 pages) all more or less follow the same nine-part template: a broad definition of the genre, a timeline of its historical development, critical concerns to bear in mind while reading, detailed readings of several key texts, in-depth analysis of major themes and issues, "signposts" for future study, a summary of significant critical works, a glossary, and an annotated reading list of additional critical sources. $21.95.Īmerican Gothic Fiction: An Introduction is one of the first three entries in Continuum's "Studies in Literary Genre" series. American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction. ![]()
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