The haunted text: Form and history in the American gothic.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Goddu, Teresa Alice.

Contributor:

Erkkila, Betsy, 1944- advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature.

Research.

United States--Research.

United States.

0323.

0591.

Penn dissertations--English.

English--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--English.

English--Penn dissertations.

0323.

0591.

Physical Description:

254 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 52-11A.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

Traditionally, the gothic genre has been identified as a formula fiction worthy of little serious study. With its ghostly visitations and family curses, its predictable and never-ending plots, the gothic has been classified as an escapist genre with a defective form. My study contests this assessment, arguing instead that the gothic is intensely engaged with historical concerns and that its formal incoherence registers the difficulty of negotiating that history. Contrary to its traditional representation as primarily an expression of psychological states, this dissertation argues that the gothic is haunted by history. Instead of fleeing reality, the gothic registers social dislocations and cultural contradictions; obsessed with the anxieties of its culture, the gothic presents a distorted, not a disengaged version of reality. Focusing on the gothic's cultural context as well as its narrative form, this study explores the relationship between linguistic disorder and social disease.

Specifically, this dissertation focuses on the peculiar problem of the American gothic. It argues that in an American context, the gothic counters America's myth of new world innocence by voicing the historical contradictions--slavery and the massacre of Native Americans, for example--that undermine America's idealized identity. Moreover, it claims that the American gothic rejects the discourse that naturalizes this myth--the plain style. While examining specific representations of cultural contradiction, ranging from the social disorder of post-revolutionary America in Brown's plague-ridden Arthur Mervyn and the problem of the encounter in John Neal's Logan, to the "gender trouble" of Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance and Louisa May Alcott's gothic tales, and the role of slavery in the African American gothic, this study discusses the stylistic strategies through which these historical horrors are inscribed in the gothic. Finally, by recovering those disturbing texts which have remained in the shadows of the American canon and by discussing the gothic's alternative account of American literature, this dissertation challenges traditional notions of America's literary history.

Notes:

Thesis (Ph.D. in English) -- Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, 1991.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-11, Section: A, page: 3928.

Supervisor: Betsy Erkkila.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.