American nightmares : the haunted house formula in American popular fiction / Dale Bailey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bailey, Dale.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Haunted houses in literature.

Popular literature--United States--History and criticism.

Popular literature.

National characteristics, American, in literature.

Ghost stories, American--History and criticism.

Ghost stories, American.

Horror tales, American--History and criticism.

Horror tales, American.

Nightmares in literature.

Home in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (157 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bowling Green, Ohio : Bowling Green State University Popular Press : University of Wisconsin Press, c1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

When Edgar Allan Poe set down the tale of the accursed House of Usher in 1839, he also laid the foundation for a literary tradition that has assumed a lasting role in American culture. "The House of Usher" and its literary progeny have not lacked for tenants in the century and a half since: writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Stephen King have taken rooms in the haunted houses of American fiction. Dale Bailey traces the haunted house tale from its origins in English gothic fiction to the paperback potboilers of the present, highlighting the unique significance of the house in the domestic, economic, and social ideologies of our nation. The author concludes that the haunted house has become a powerful and profoundly subversive symbol of everything that has gone nightmarishly awry in the American Dream.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Preface

1. Welcome to the Funhouse: Gothic and the Architecture of Subversion

2. The Sentient House and the Ghostly Tradition: The Legacy of Poe and Hawthorne

3. June Cleaver in the House of Horrors: Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting of Hill House'

4. "Too bad we can't stay, baby!": The Horror at Amityville

5. Middle-Class Nightmares: Robert Marasco's Burnt Offerings and Anne Rivers Siddons's 'The House Next Door'

6. Unmanned by the American Dream: Stephen King's 'The Shining'

7. Ghosts in the Machine: The Future of the Haunted House Formula

Notes

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-135) and index.

ISBN:

9780299268732

029926873X

9781283976183

1283976188

OCLC:

825768034