American Gothic

Gothic LiteratureThe Beginnings…

Gothic Literary tradition came to be in part from the Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages.

Gothic cathedrals with irregularly placed towers, and high stained-glass windows were intended to inspire awe and fear in religious worshipers.

•Gargoyles—carvings of small deformed creatures squatting at the corners and crevices of Gothic cathedrals—were supposed to ward off evil spirits, but they often look more like demonic spirits themselves.•Think of the gargoyle as a mascot of Gothic, and you will get an idea of the kind of imaginative distortion of reality that Gothic represents.

Gothic vs. Romanticism

Romantic writers celebrated the beauties of nature.

Gothic writers were peering into the darkness at the supernatural.

Romanticism developed as a reaction against the rationalism of the Age of Reason. The romantics freed the

imagination from the hold of reason, so they could follow their imagination wherever it might lead.

For some Romantics, when they looked at the individual, they saw hope (think “A Psalm of Life”).

For some Romantic writers, the imagination led to the threshold of the unknown—the shadowy region where the fantastic, the demonic and the insane reside. When the Gothic's saw the

individual, they saw the potential of evil.

Purpose• To evoke “terror” versus “horror” in the reader

because of situations bordering reality/unreality•Often used to teach a message

• May lack a Medieval setting but will develop an atmosphere of gloom and terror

Differentiating between the two• Horror

•“An awful apprehension”•Described distinctly•Something grotesque•So appalling,

unrealistic•Depends on physical

characteristics

• Terror•“A sickening realization”•Suggestive of what will

happen•Depends on reader’s

imagination•Sense of uncertainty•Creates an “intangible

atmosphere of spiritual psychic dread”

Gothic Conventions

Murder Death Suicide Ghosts Demons

Gloomy settings

Family secrets

Dungeons Curses Torture

Vampires Spirits Castles Tombs Terror

Metonymy of gloom and terror

Metonymy is a subtype of metaphor, in which something (like rain) is used to stand for something else (like sorrow). For example, the film industry likes to use metonymy as a quick shorthand, so we often notice that it is raining in funeral scenes.

Note the following metonymies that suggest mystery, danger, or the

supernaturalwind, especially howling sighs, moans, howls, eerie sounds

rain, especially blowing clanking chains

doors grating on rusty hinges gusts of wind blowing out lights

footsteps approaching doors suddenly slamming shut

lights in abandoned rooms crazed laughter

characters trapped in a room baying of distant dogs (or wolves?)

ruins of buildings thunder and lightning

Gothic Movement in America

The Gothic Tradition was firmly established in Europe before American writers had made names for themselves.

By the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathanial Hawthorne, and to a lesser extent Washington Irving and Herman Melville were using the Gothic elements in their writing.

Edgar Allan Poe was the master of the Gothic form in the United States.

Gothic aspects of American Romanticism - Naturally American writers could not

avoid references to European experiences, particularly British romantic poets and German philosophy.

- However they succeeded in adapting them to their own cultural circumstances. American response to British Romanticism accelerated in two directions. One of them was Transcendentalism.

Transcendentalism - The "founding father" of Transcendental movement

was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who expressed admiration for romantic values in his book Nature and essay Self Reliance. Emerson praised five tenets:

"intuition is more trustworthy than reason, expressing deeply felt experience is more valuable than elaborating universal principles, the individual is at the centre of life and God is at centre of the individual, nature is an array of physical symbols from which knowledge of the supernatural can be intuited and we should aspire to the Ideal, to changing what is to what ought to be."

Dark Romanticism (I) - Still Ralph Waldo Emerson had opponents. Edgar

Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville did not accept his optimistic vision of the world and did not believe in happy future of mankind.

- For the sake of pessimistic nature and strong relationship with Romanticism it was described as Dark Romanticism. Gothic and romantic writing are closely related chronologically and share some themes and characteristics, for example the character of tormented with pangs of conscience man.

Dark Romanticism (II) -Most importantly, Gothic as well as Romanticism are

considered as definitive shift from neoclassical ideals of logic and reason, toward romantic belief in emotion and imagination. Both are preoccupied with the individual, the human mind and thus with interior mental process.

As Eric Savoy rightly noticed, it shows the other side of the coin, the nightmare which hides under the "American dream".

Dark Romanticism (III) - American Gothic writers did not have spooky old castles,

monasteries and legends like their European "professional colleagues", but they did have: the frontier, Puritan legacy, slavery and political utopianism.

- American Gothic adapted all main conflicts, settings, motifs and narrative situations, like: the feeling of fear and anxiety, the gloomy atmosphere, unexplainable, supernatural events or motif of haunted place.

- While Transcendentalists were convinced that perfection is inborn quality of mankind and ignore less praiseworthy nature of human, Dark Romantics uttered something completely opposite, meaning that human beings were equally capable of evil and good, individual is vulnerable to sin, self-destruction...

Edgar Allan Poe His stories have:

Settings that featuring○ Dark, medieval castles○ Decaying ancient estates

Characters that are○ Male—insane○ Female—beautiful and dead (or dying)

Plots that include○ Murder○ Live burials○ Physical and mental torture○ Retribution from beyond the grave

For Poe, it was only in these extreme situations that people revealed their true nature.

The Gothic dimension of Poe’s fictional world offered

him a way to explore the human mind in these

extreme situations and so arrive at an essential truth

Nathanial Hawthorne He also used Gothic elements in his

work to express what he felt were essential truths

Instead of looking at the mind for its dysfunction, Hawthorne examined the human heart under conditions of fear, vanity, mistrust, and betrayal.

Nathanial Hawthorne (II) - The man's relationship to the natural world as well as

mysterious, disturbing nature of human life also preoccupied Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the leading writers of his time. His novel House of Seven Gables constitutes the part of early American Gothic. It includes many characteristic features like: fascination with location, reference to the supernatural, irrational, horrifying events. In The Haunted Mind Hawthorne wrote: "In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the

lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, these dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like his....pray that your grief may slumber."

The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne liked to explore the theme of sin,

penitence and morality. The best reflection of Hawthorne's interests makes up his most famous novel The Scarlet Letter.

- The plot is set in 19th century Puritan Massachusetts and presents the story of Hester Prynne, a fallen woman, who gave birth to a child after an affair. It was really controversial theme but Hawthorne was not focused on the affair's course but its effects, like: sin, shame, envy.

- The Scarlet Letter became one of America's first mass-published books, thanks to which Hawthorne gained respect among New England's literary establishment. Nathaniel Hawthorne soon after that befriended with Herman Melville (Moby-Dick).

Southern Gothic After the real horrors of the Civil War,

the Gothic tradition lost its popularity. During the 20th century, it made a

comeback in the American South. Authors like William Faulkner, Carson

McCullers, Truman Capote, and Flannery O’Connor are grouped together because of the gloom and pessimism of their fiction.

Edgar Allan PoeDuring a life marked by pain and loss, Edgar Allan Poe wrote haunting tales in which he explored the dark side of the human mind. A well-read man with a taste for literature, Poe was cursed with a morbidly sensitive nature and made his feelings of sadness and depression the basis of a distinctive body of literary work.

The following is a look at the life and work of a mysterious American master.

Marked by LossPoe’s Childhood

Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, one of three children born to a couple who toured the East as actors.

Before he was three years old, his father had abandoned the family, and his mother had died of tuberculosis.

John and Francis Allan, took Poe to their home in Richmond, Virginia and became his foster parents.With the Allan’s he briefly lived in England, and

continued his education in the United States.

A Restless SpiritPoe’s Writing

This period in Poe’s life was full of high’s and lows.1826, he started at the University of Virginia,

where his reckless habits led to heavy debt, forcing him to leave school.

He moved to Boston, where he published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems in 1827.

In 1828, he was flat broke and enlisted into the army. John Allan got him an appointment at West Point, but he found the school confining and made sure he was expelled.

A Man of LettersPoe’s Career

After leaving West Point, he moved to Baltimore to live with his aunt Maria Clemm and her young daughter Virginia. There he began writing short stories.

In 1834, he moved to Richmond to work for the Southern Literary Messenger. His reviews in the Messenger led to increased in the magazine’s circulation.

In 1836, Poe married his cousin. Soon after, a disagreement led to him leaving the Messenger and moving again, this time to New York City.

After publishing another short novel, he moved again searching for work, this time to Philadelphia.

His years in Philadelphia would be Poe’s most productive.In 1839 he was the editor of Burton’s

Gentlemen’s Magazine, to which he contributed both reviews and stories.

His first collection of short stories was published, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.

He was then fired from Burton’s in 1840. He attempted to begin his own literary magazine,

but it failed. He accepted an offer as editor of Graham’s

Magazine, where he published his groundbreaking story The Murders in the Rue Morgue” ○ The was considered groundbreaking because it was

the first detective story.

The real trouble beginsPoe’s trouble vs. success

Poe was awarded a $100 prize for his short story “The Gold Bug” published in 1845.

This brought his the recognition and success that he had always wanted.

With the success, he was hit with a major personal blow; Virginia, who had been battling illness since 1842, died.

In the years following Virginia’s death, Poe struggled with despair as well as his own failing health.

He moved back to Baltimore in 1849, where his health declined quickly.He collapsed on a Baltimore street where he

was taken to a hospital. He died a few days later.

Poe’s Reputation

Poe’s work generated strong responses. Critics either loved his work, or they hated it.

Shortly after his death, a one-time friend published a biography on Poe. This work established the view of Poe as a gifted, but

socially unaccepted writer. This tainted his reputation in America for many years. Eventually in the United States, his reputation was

regained. Today, Poe is recognized as a master of poetry, a

superb writer of short stories, and a profound explorer of the torments of the human soul.

He wrote only one novel, around 50 poems, and 70 short stories.

New fictions / New realities

Poe also introduced of a new form of short fiction—the detective story—in tales featuring the Parisian crime solver C. Auguste Dupin. The detective story follows naturally from Poe’s interest in puzzles, word games, and secret codes, which he loved to present and decode in the pages of the Messenger to dazzle his readers. The word “detective” did not exist in English at the time that Poe was writing, but the genre has become a fundamental mode of twentieth-century literature and film. Dupin and his techniques of psychological inquiry have informed countless sleuths, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.

Timeline of Poe’s Work

1809Poe was born on January 19th

1827Poe published Tamerlane and Other Poems

1831Expelled from West PointPublishes Poems

1839Poe published Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque including “The Fall of the House of Usher”

1841Poe wrote “The Murders of Rue Morgue”

1845Poe published “The Raven”

1847Poe dies in Baltimore on October 7th

1836 Poe married Virginia Clemm

The Fall of the House of Usher (1939)

A woman returns from the dead in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The story’s narrator is summoned by his boyhood friend Roderick Usher to visit him during a period of emotional distress. The narrator discovers that Roderick’s twin sister, Madeline, is also sick. She takes a turn for the worse shortly after the narrator’s arrival, and the men bury Madeline in a tomb within the house. They later discover, to their horror, that they have entombed her alive. Madeline claws her way out, collapsing eventually on Roderick, who dies in fear.

Empiricism and Transcendentalism

The novel was inspired by two factors: Empiricism and Transcendentalism.

Poe's opposition toward the transcendental believes is obvious here, every element of his novel confirms his convictions: the main characters environment house. Roderick Usher represents central transcendental views:

morbid sharpness of senses, connection with the "oversoul." Poe uses Ushers to prove his point, he shows that there is

no brightness and goodness only blackness and evil.

Interpretations

Interpretation #1 - Roderick attempts to murder his sister and sends for the narrator to strengthen him in the days leading up to it.

Interpretation #2 - The narrator is insane. Interpretation #3 - The decay surrounding the house

has poisoned the air, causing bodily illness to all who wander near its environs (this may be a plausible explanation for the narrator's possible madness). 

Interpretation #4 - Everything happens just like the narrator tells us.

Main themes

Evil - Evil has haunted Roderick and the Usher family for generations. The root of the evil is not spelled out specifically, although incest between Roderick and his "tenderly beloved sister" is suggested. Throw in the family tree never putting forth an "enduring branch" and that the "entire family lay in a direct line of descent" and incest is obvious. The debilitating physical and mental faculties of Roderick Usher are most likely the result of such relationships.

Main themes

Madness - Roderick and Madeline demonstrate tell-tale signs of madness--anxiety, nervousness, depression. Madeline suffers from catalepsy, a symptom of nervous disorders such as schizophrenia, hysteria, alcoholism, and brain tumors, that causes long periods of unconsciousness. The narrator also demonstrates signs of madness as catalogued above. Roderick and Madeline's isolation contributes to their madness.

Study Questions

How does Poe portray the motif of the doppelganger, or character double, in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?

How does Poe use setting as a Gothic element in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?

How does Poe portray family in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?

Poe’s language