American Gothic in Literature and Culture

The painting called -American Gothic-* is perhaps the most discussed, adapted, and satirized art work in American cultural history. What is so fascinating about the theme of American Gothic? We will examine the manifold and complex ways the Old World/European Gothic aesthetic intertwined with New World fears and failures, as well as thrill and humor, making this cultural genre a key to developments in the ‘American psyche’. Indeed, the American Gothic generally encodes deep social criticism. We will look at five main -Gothic clusters”: Puritan / New Republic / Dark Romantic / Southern / Ethnic; in each we will read historical & fictional texts and view contemporary films. In connection with the -Puritan Gothic,” for example, the horror of the Salem (Massachusetts) witch persecutions in the 17th century, perpetrated by the supposedly most pious of people, inspired critical fiction, drama, and film through the centuries (e.g. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Miller, film adaptation of Miller’s The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder). Margaret Atwood’s astonishing poem titled -Half-Hanged Mary” about her ancestor Mary Webster who survived an all-night hanging shows some of the twists that Gothic witch-hunting resulted in: -Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one,” Mary says in the poem. Current authors expose the pattern of witch-hunting in present-day American society. (Even the 2012 presidential election reveals evidence of this…) Shorts texts by such authors as (in addition to those mentioned above) Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, William Faulkner, and Carson McCullers will be analyzed. We will read Nobel prize-winner Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) as an outstanding example of engagé ethnic Gothic. Of course the triad of works called American Gothic – novel by Robert Bloch in 1974 (Bloch also wrote Psycho, the basis for the Hitchcock film), cult film (1988), television series (1995-6) – will be touched on. *1930, by Grant Wood; http://maryckhayes.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/american-gothic-large4.jpg In addition to the seminar reader (to be available at the beginning of the new semester), please purchase Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987). Anglistik - Sprachpraxis Universität Siegen WiSe 2012/13 Ph.D. Waegner Cathy Ph.D