American Gothic fiction is a subgenre of Gothic fiction that adapts the mode's conventions of fear, the supernatural and the uncanny to specifically American settings and anxieties. In place of the ruined castles and monasteries of the European Gothic, American Gothic writers set their fiction against the wilderness and the frontier, drew on Puritan imagery of sin, guilt and damnation, and later incorporated anxieties provoked by Darwinian evolution and the fracture of the family. The genre traces to early writers such as Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and its regional branches include Southern Gothic, associated with William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty; later practitioners include Shirley Jackson, Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison.
Facts
Place of OriginThe United States, rooted in the imagery and guilt of colonial Puritan culture, whose visions of condemnation left a lasting impact on the American Gothic tradition. 1 Notable Example19th-century authors Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose work drew on Puritan imagery of Hell and condemnation. 1 Defining TraitA subgenre of gothic fiction distinguished by elements including rationality versus the irrational, Puritanism, guilt, the uncanny, ab-humans, ghosts and monsters. 1 In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. American Gothic Fiction (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead paragraph
American gothic fiction is a subgenre of gothic fiction. Elements specific to American Gothic include: rationality versus the irrational, puritanism, guilt, the uncanny (das Unheimliche), ab-humans, ghosts, and monsters.
Analysis of major themes section, on Poe and Hawthorne
Puritan imagery, particularly that of Hell, acted as potent brain candy for 19th-century authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Analysis of major themes section, on Puritan culture
The dark and nightmarish visions the Puritan culture of condemnation, reinforced by shame and guilt, created a lasting impact on the collective consciousness.
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