Publisher's Synopsis
The gothic novel - the literary stronghold of ghosts, family curses, imperiled heroines and cumbersome plots - might be thought to fall under the category of "escapist fiction". However, in this reappraisal Teresa Goddu demonstrates that the American Gothic novel, was, in often suprising ways, actively engaged with social, political and cultural concerns of its time.;Although social dislocations such as slavery or the massacre of Native Americans were repressed by the national consciouness, Goddu points out that these subjects were incorporated by the gothic novel, articulated into an enduring national identity. Focusing on literature between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, this work traces the development of the genre as a whole and of several subgenres - the female gothic, the Southern gothic and the African-American gothic. Among the works examined are Poe's "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym", Hawthorn's "The House of the Seven Gables", Alcott's ghost stories, and Jacob's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl". It is, finally, the African-American gothic, Goddu argues, that illuminates most clearly the link between frightening literature and a horror-filled social reality.;Questioning basic assumptions about America's identity, this text is a fresh examination of a genre of American literature and the complex historical circumstance that produced it.
