American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative

by Robert K. Martin (Editor), Eric Savoy (Editor)

Overview

In America as in Britain, the rise of the Gothic represented the other—the fearful shadows cast upon Enlightenment philosophies of common sense, democratic positivism, and optimistic futurity. Many critics have recognized the centrality of these shadows to American culture and self-identification. American Gothic, however, remaps the field by offering a series of revisionist essays associated with a common theme: the range and variety of Gothic manifestations in high and popular art from the roots of American culture to the present.

The thirteen essayists approach the persistence of the Gothic in American culture by providing a composite of interventions that focus on specific issues—the histories of gender and race, the cultures of cities and scandals and sensations—in order to advance distinct theoretical paradigms. Each essay sustains a connection between a particular theoretical field and a central problem in the Gothic tradition.

Drawing widely on contemporary theory—particularly revisionist views of Freud such as those offered by Lacan and Kristeva—this volume ranges from the well-known Gothic horrors of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne to the popular fantasies of Stephen King and the postmodern visions of Kathy Acker. Special attention is paid to the issues of slavery and race in both black and white texts, including those by Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner. In the view of the editors and contributors, the Gothic is not so much a historical category as a mode of thought haunted by history, a part of suburban life and the lifeblood of films such as The Exorcist and Fatal Attraction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587293023
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	06/01/1998
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Robert Martin is professor emeritus of English at the Université de Montréal. Eric Savoy is professor of English at the Université de Montréal.

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction I. FRAMING THE GOTHIC: THEORIES AND HISTORIES The Face of the Tenant: A Theory of American Gothic The Nurture of the Gothic, or How Can a Text Be Both Popular and Subversive? Dr. Frankenstein Meets Dr. Freud II. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE GOTHIC The Gothic Import of Faulkner's "Black Son" in Light in August On Stephen King's Phallus, or The Postmodern Gothic III. RACIAL POLITICS IN GOTHIC TEXTS Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe's "The Black Cat" Haunted by Jim Crow: Gothic Fictions by Hawthorne and Faulkner Looking into Black Skulls: American Gothic, the Revolutionary Theatre, and Arniri Baraka's Dutchman IV. GOTHIC CURRENTS IN WOMEN'S WRITING An Ecstasy of Apprehension: The Gothic Pleasures of Sentimental Fiction The Masochistic Pleasures of the Gothic: Paternal Incest in Alcott's "A Marble Woman" If a Building Is a Sentence, So Is a Body: Kathy Acker and the Postcolonial Gothic V. THE GOTHIC POSTMODERN Making Monsters, or Serializing Killers Some Stations of Suburban Gothic Notes on Contributors Index

Editorial Reviews

These essays demonstrate that the Gothic is not the outmoded paradigm that critics such as Jameson declare but rather a vital, dynamic, protean lens through which to read American culture in the broadest sense; they also reflect contemporary critical interest in such issues as race, class, and gender. This volume will take its place beside Fleenor's The Female Gothic and Thompson's Gothic Imagination as an indispensable collection for students and critics alike.”—Anne Williams, author, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic

From the Publisher