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Sep 13, 2013 · American Gothic fiction has only recently been considered worthy of serious study. Before Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), such works were greatly deemphasized within the assumptions of New Criticism, “Old” Historicism, the History of Ideas, and the theories of literature and culture underpinning those movements.
A character study of a man and a woman portrayed in front of a home, American Gothic is one of the most famous American paintings of the 20th century, and has been widely parodied in American popular culture.
This introduction defines American gothic historically, thematically, and conceptually, and traces the history of the cultural analysis of the American gothic. It suggests that the definitions of America and those of gothic are so closely related as to be inseparable.
An important variant of the Gothic contest against impersonal forces is the theme of the divided self, in which protagonists are motivated by uncon-scious desires and irrational impulses. Within the American Gothic tradition, this strain is arguably introduced by late eighteenth-century Gothicist Charles Brockden Brown, notably in his 1799 novel
Sep 13, 2013 · This essay seeks to explore questions of space, place and time in the American Gothic. It does so by confronting “America” as a site of hybridity, where surfaces and depths intermingle.
- David Punter
- 2013
In American Gothic, Grant Wood directly evoked images of an earlier generation by featuring a farmer and his daughter posed stiffly and dressed as if they were, as the artist put it, “tintypes from my old family album.” They stand outside of their home, built in an 1880s style known as Carpenter Gothic.
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.
