Definition of gothic literature2/21/2023 ![]() ![]() The Gothic finds its footing in the United States in the early 19th century. As Jerrold Hogle notes, since the 18th century, Gothic fiction has enabled readers to “address and disguise some of the most important desires, quandaries, and sources of anxiety, from the most internal and mental to the widely social and cultural.” 4 Malchow defines it not as a genre but a discourse, “a language of panic, of unreasoning anxiety.” 1 David Punter points to the themes of paranoia, the barbaric, and taboo, 2 and Allan Lloyd-Smith states that the Gothic is “about the return of the past, of the repressed and denied, the buried secret that subverts and corrodes the present, whatever the culture does not want to know or admit, will not or dare not tell itself.” 3 Specific definitions aside, Gothic literature generally challenged Enlightenment principles by giving voice to irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses, thereby conjuring an angst-ridden world of violence, sex, terror, and death. Several scholars have attempted to categorize the Gothic: H. Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto ( 1765) is considered the first Gothic novel, and Ann Radcliffe is seen as a cofounder of the genre thanks to Gothic romances such as The Mysteries of Udolpho ( 1794) and The Italian ( 1797). The style of writing has evolved from the American Gothic tradition, which again evolved from the English Gothic tradition. “Southern Gothic” is the label attached to a particular strain of literature from the American South. A sense of evil lurks in their stories and novels, sometimes taking on the shape of ghosts or living dead, ghouls who haunt the New Casino South and serve as symbolic reminders of the many unresolved issues still burdening the South to this day.įrom the Gothic to American Gothic to Southern Gothic ![]() Southern Gothic also frames the bleak and jarringly violent stories by contemporary so-called Rough South writers, such as Cormac McCarthy, Barry Hannah, Dorothy Allison, William Gay, and Ron Rash. African American writers like Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) and Richard Wright have had their own unique perspective on the Southern Gothic and the repressed racial tensions at the heart of the genre. O’Connor’s work is particularly steeped in the grotesque, a subgenre of the Gothic. Writers like Tennessee Williams (1911–1983), Carson McCullers (1917–1967), and Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) drew on Gothic elements. The generation of southern writers after Faulkner continued the exploration of the clashes between Old and New South. On top of this, Faulkner’s complex, modernist, labyrinthine language creates in readers a similarly Gothic sense of uncertainty and alienation. These transformations, and the resulting anxieties felt by Chickasaw Indians, poor whites and blacks, and aristocratic families alike, mark Faulkner’s work as deeply Gothic. His fictional Yoknapatawpha County was home to the bitter Civil War defeat and the following social, racial, and economic ruptures in the lives of its people. While Poe is a foundational figure in Southern Gothic, William Faulkner (1897–1962) arguably looms the largest. Many of his best-known poems and short stories, while not placed in a recognizable southern setting, display all the elements that would come to characterize Southern Gothic. Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) became the first Southern Gothic writer to fully explore the genre’s potential. Because of its dark and controversial subject matter, literary scholars and critics initially sought to discredit the gothic on a national level. Southern Gothic texts also mark a Freudian return of the repressed: the region’s historical realities take concrete forms in the shape of ghosts that highlight all that has been unsaid in the official version of southern history. The Southern Gothic brings to light the extent to which the idyllic vision of the pastoral, agrarian South rests on massive repressions of the region’s historical realities: slavery, racism, and patriarchy. During the 20th century, Charles Crow has noted, the South became “the principal region of American Gothic” in literature. While related to both the English and American Gothic tradition, Southern Gothic is uniquely rooted in the South’s tensions and aberrations. Characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses grotesque characters dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation. Southern Gothic is a mode or genre prevalent in literature from the early 19th century to this day. ![]()
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