American Gothic Romance

1. American Gothic Romance

2. Supernatural events - ghosts, doors that open themselves, unexplained sounds, etc. Damsels in distress are frequent.  Women who are frightened and confused, wandering around lost, or dying due to a slow and unexplainable ailment. Words designed to evoke images of gloom and doom: dark, foreboding, forbidding, ghostly, etc. Romantic themes often involve the death of a man or woman in the throes of some great passion, the obsessive nature of a man or woman in love, or excessive grief one feels upon the loss of a loved one. Gothic literature…

3. Settings include large, drafty old houses that have "been in the family for years."  Atmosphere of mystery and suspense A ghostly legend, an unexplainable occurrence, or a story about a horrible death or murder. Omens, foreshadowing, and dreams usually play a large role in the mysterious air that is created within the story. Include highly charged emotional states like terror, a feeling that one is on the brink of insanity, anger, agitation, an exaggerated feeling of some impending doom, and obsessive love. Gothic literature…

4. American Gothic:The Brooding: Romantics Not all American Romantics were optimistic or had faith in the innate goodness of humankind. Three giants from this period, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville are what have been call “brooding” romantics or “anti-transcendentalists.”

5. American Gothic:The Brooding Romantics • Theirs is a complex philosophy, filled with dark currents and a deep awareness of the human capacity for evil. • Their stories are characterized by a probing of the inner life of their characters and examination of the complex and often mysterious forces that motivate human behavior. • They are romantics; however, they emphasize emotion, nature, the individual, and the unusual.

6. Anti-Transcendentalists aka Dark Romantics • Nathaniel Hawthorne • saw a dark side to human existence and recorded this aspect of human nature in their works. • spiritual facts are not necessarily good or harmless. • developed from the mystical and melancholy aspects of Puritan thought. • works explored the conflict between good and evil, psychological effects of guilt and sin, and madness and derangement in human psyche. • saw the blankness and the horror of evil within humanity.

7. Where does Edgar Allen Poe fit? • Poe can be viewed more as a Dark Romantic or a Gothic writer. • Poe’s works strongly represent Gothic elements more so than valuing intuition over reason or examining the natural world for God and spiritual truths.