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 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.

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

Edgar Allan Poe

During 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.

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 (the Ravens are named after his famous poem!) There he began writing short stories.

In 1834, he moved to Richmond to work for the Southern Literary Messenger.

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 where he would write his most successful works.

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 him 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.

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

RomanticismRomantic writers placed a new emphasis on intuitive,

“felt” experience and often contrasted poetry with science, which they saw as destroying the very truth it claimed to seek.

The romantics wanted to rise above “dull realities” to a realm of higher truth and searched for exotic settings in the more “natural” past or in a world far removed from the grimy and noisy industrial age.

Romantic writers tried to reflect on the natural world until dull reality fell away to reveal underlying beauty and truth.

Characteristics of Romanticism Values feeling and intuition over reason. Place faith in inner experience and the power of imagination. Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature. Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication. Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual. Reflects on nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral

development. Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress. Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm

and the inner world of the imagination. Sees poetry as the highest expression of imagination. Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folklore.

Romantic Techniques

Remoteness of setting in time and place. Improbable plots. Unlikely characterization. Informal writing style. Experiments in new forms. Individualized form of writing.

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.

A great description of Southern Gothic from Oprah’s Book Club when they were reading Carson McCullers:

 ”Southern gothic writers leverage the details of the American South—the lonely plantations, aging Southern belles, dusty downtowns, dilapidated slave quarters, Spanish moss and Southern charm—to bring life to their slice of history. Steeped in folklore, oral history, suspense and local color, southern gothic is first popularized by 19th-Century short story masters Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce. In the 1920s and 30s, William Faulkner makes the genre popular again with his heartbreaking views of life in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, depicted with stunning detail in books like The Sound and the Fury, Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!”

Characters of Southern Gothic

off-kilter characters, many of whom are "not right in the head.“

many broken bodies, and even more broken souls

morality and innocence are in question purity of heart rarely overpowers

desperation

The Ladies Have Their Say

Many female Southern Gothic writers, such as, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Carson McCullers

Also many female characters powered by their desires

Southern Gothic: Distinguishing Features

Strangers: The main characters of southern gothic stories are often strangers in strange places, small towns in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana or Georgia (as in the case of Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor's work) inhabited by the most compelling band of outsiders you ever thought possible.

Southern Gothic: Distinguishing Features

Freakishness: In most southern gothic stories, there is a pivotal character or someone close to them who is set apart from the world by a disability or odd way of seeing the world. You won't meet very many "normal" characters in the writings of William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote or Carson McCullers—and this is by design. This fascination with the outsider is in many ways used to show readers not only the individuality of the southern culture, but also to connect each reader to their own unique "freakish" nature.

Southern Gothic: Distinguishing Features

Imprisonment: This is often both literal and figurative. While many southern gothic tales include an incident where a character is sent to jail or locked up, there are also several gothic characters that live in fate's prison without hope of parole.

Southern Gothic: Distinguishing Features

Violence: Southern gothic writers covered a period in the South's history when violence was particularly prevalent. After the bloodshed of the Civil War, and the period of reconstruction that followed, racial tension and fear ran high in many small southern towns. This plays its part in many of the stories of this genre.

Southern Gothic: Distinguishing Features

Sense of Place: It wouldn't be southern gothic if you didn't feel like you'd been thrust in the center of a dusty, peach-scented, lonely downtown where porch-bound widows rock gently on creaky rockers, rusty pick-up trucks drive by filled with grimy farmhands, the general store is run by the town drunk, and flies and mosquitoes circle glasses of ice-filled lemonade. The sense of place is strong—awash in calm heat, lost dreams and wayward souls.

William Faulkner

William Faulkner Born near Oxford, Mississippi in 1897;

died in 1962  Dropped out of high school in 1915 and

joined the British Royal Flying Corps and went to Canada to train

WWI ended and he saw no combat, so he returned to Oxford, Mississippi.

William Faulkner

Wrote poetry—published The Marble Faun in 1924.

Met Sherwood Anderson in 1925 who encouraged him to write prose.

Wrote his first novel in 1926—Soldier’s Pay—and Anderson helped get it published.

In 1929 he married his high school sweet heart who had recently divorced.

William Faulkner

In 1944, after twenty years of writing, Faulkner had little to show for it. Most of his books were out of print, and he was working as a Hollywood script writer to make ends meet.

 In 1946, The Portable Faulkner was published, an anthology of his work, and it brought him a great deal of fame in the U.S. (he was already popular in Europe)

William Faulkner

In 1946, The Portable Faulkner was published, an anthology of his work, and it brought him a great deal of fame in the U.S. (he was already popular in Europe)

 In 1950 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his anti-racist novel Intruder in the Dust

 He died of a heart attack at the age of 65 in 1962

Faulkner Novels

Mosquitos (1927) Sartoris (1929) The Sound and the Fury (1929) As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931) Light in August (1932) Absalom! Absalom! (1936) Intruder in the Dust (1950) The Reivers (1962).

Why Faulkner is important:

He attempted to delve into human psychology in his works, to focus on “the human heart in conflict”

Why Faulkner is important: He used experimental methods that

influence American literature that follows him; methods such as using more than one narrator, even a narrator who is dead (in As I Lay Dying) and one who is mentally handicapped (one of the 4 narrators in The Sound and the Fury)

Why Faulkner is important:

He created a fictional county—Yoknapatawpha County—and created a series of characters who live there and reappear in many of his works.○Colonel Sartoris who appears in “A

Rose for Emily” is a key character from this fictional county.

Why Faulkner is important: He loves the “old order” of the Old

South, but knows its faults; he loves the land, the region, the state of Mississippi, but also states that “Loving all of it even while he had to hate some of it because he knows now that you don’t love because; you love despite: not for the virtues, but despite the faults” (“Mississippi”).

Why Faulkner is important: The main faults Faulkner finds in

the South are ignorance and racism; he created the fictional Snope family to depict these faults, and they appear in many of his works.

Southern Gothic: Distinguishing Features

Source: http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Southern-Gothic-Distinguising-Features