Following the structure of other titles in the Continuum Introductions to Literary Genres series, American Gothic Fiction includes: A broad definition of the genre and its essential elements. A timeline of developments within the genre. Critical concerns to bear in mind while reading in the genre. Detailed readings of a range of widely taught texts. In-depth analysis of major themes and issues. Signposts for further study within the genre. A summary of the most important criticism in the field. A glossary of terms. An annotated, critical reading list. This book offers students, writers, and serious fans a window into some of the most popular topics, styles and periods in this subject. Authors studied in American Gothic Fiction include Charles Brockden Brown, William Montgomery Bird, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, George Lippard, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Gilmore Simms, John Neal, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ambrose Bierce, Emma Dawson, W.D. Howells, Henry James, William Faulkner, Anne Rice and William Gibson

This new critique of contemporary African-American fiction explores its intersections with and critiques of the Gothic genre. Wester reveals the myriad ways writers manipulate the genre to critique the gothic's traditional racial ideologies and the mechanisms that were appropriated and re-articulated as a useful vehicle for the enunciation of the peculiar terrors and complexities of black existence in America. Re-reading major African American literary texts such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Of One Blood, Cane, Invisible Man, and Corregidora African American Gothic investigates texts from each major era in African American Culture to show how the gothic has consistently circulated throughout the African American literary canon.

American Gothic Art and Architecture in the Age of Romantic Literature analyses the impact British Gothic novels and historical romances had on American art and architecture in the Romantic era. Key figures include Thomas Jefferson, Washington Allston, Alexander Jackson Davis, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Thomas Cole, Edwin Forrest and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne articulated the subject of this book when he wrote that he could understand Sir Walter Scott’s romances better after viewing Scott’s Gothic Revival house Abbotsford, and he understood the house better for having read the romances. This study investigates this symbiotic relationship between the arts and Gothic literature to reveal new interpretative possibilities. Contents Introduction Chapter One. Gothic Monticello: Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Narratives Chapter Two. ‘Banditti Mania’: The Gothic Haunting of Washington Allston Chapter Three. ‘Arranging the Trap Doors’: The Gothic Revival Castles of Alexander Jackson Davis Chapter Four. Old Dwellings Transmogrified: The Homes of James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving Chapter Five. Gothic Castles in the Landscape: Thomas Cole, Sir Walter Scott And the Hudson River School of Painting Chapter Six. The Theatrical Spectacle of Medieval Revival: Edwin Forrest’s Fonthill Castle Conclusion. ‘Clap It Into a Romance:’ Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Gothic Houses

Defining the American gothic tradition both within the context of the major movements of intellectual history over the past three-hundred years, as well as within the issues critical to American culture, this comprehensive volume covers a diverse terrain of well-known American writers, from Poe to Faulkner to Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy. Charles L. Crow demonstrates how the gothic provides a forum for discussing key issues of changing American culture, explores forbidden subjects, and provides a voice for the repressed and silenced.

This book explores the Gothic mode as it appears in the literature, visual arts, and culture of different areas of Latin America. Focusing on works from authors in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, the Andes, Brazil, and the Southern Cone, the essays in this volume illuminate the existence of native representations of the Gothic, while also exploring the presence of universal archetypes of terror and horror. Through the analysis of global and local Gothic topics and themes, they evaluate the reality of a multifaceted territory marked by a shifting colonial and postcolonial relationship with Europe and the United States. The book asks questions such as: Is there such a thing as "Latin American Gothic" in the same sense that there is an "American Gothic" and "British Gothic"? What are the main elements that particularly characterize Latin American Gothic? How does Latin American Gothic function in the context of globalization? What do these elements represent in relation to specific national literatures? What is the relationship between the Gothic and the Postcolonial? What can Gothic criticism bring to the study of Latin American cultural manifestations and, conversely, what can these offer the Gothic? The analysis performed here reflects a body of criticism that understands the Gothic as a global phenomenon with specific manifestations in particular territories while also acknowledging the effects of "Globalgothic" on a transnational and transcultural level. Thus, the volume seeks to open new spaces and areas of scholarly research and academic discussion both regionally and globally with the presentation of a solid analysis of Latin American texts and other cultural phenomena which are manifestly related to the Gothic world.

This remarkable anthology of gothic fiction, spanning two centuries of American writing, gives us an intriguing and entertaining look at how the gothic imagination makes for great literature in the works of forty-six exceptional writers. Joyce Carol Oates has a special perspective on the “gothic” in American short fiction, at least partially because her own horror yarns rank on the spine-tingling chart with the masters. She is able to see the unbroken link of the macabre that ties Edgar Allan Poe to Anne Rice and to recognize the dark psychological bonds between Henry James and Stephen King. In showing us the gothic vision—a world askew where mankind’s forbidden impulses are set free from the repressions of the psyche, and nature turns malevolent and lawless—Joyce Carol Oates includes Henry James’s “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes,” Herman Melville’s horrific tale of factory women, “The Tartarus of Maids,” and Edith Wharton’s “Afterward,” which are rarely collected and appear together here for the first time. Added to these stories of the past are new ones that explore the wounded worlds of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Raymond Carver, and more than twenty other wonderful contemporary writers. This impressive collection reveals the astonishing scope of the gothic writer’s subject matter, style, and incomparable genius for manipulating our emotions and penetrating our dreams. With Joyce Carol Oates’s superb introduction, American Gothic Tales is destined to become the standard one-volume edition of the genre that American writers, if they didn’t create it outright, have brought to its chilling zenith.