American Literature—January 25th-26th
R. Bennett/S. Cook
Gothicism
Read the explanation below of Gothicism. Underline key points that define the genre itself,
as well as connect it to Romanticism. Then, read Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Annotate as you
read, analyzing how the story displays gothic principles (consider setting, characterization,
etc.) and how, too, it overlaps into the Romantic genre. You will do the same for “The
Minister’s Black Veil” over the weekend.
Gothic literature is a genre that made readers think about the darker side of human
nature. Above all, it is a genre that made readers start to behold the great emotions that
writers could evoke. As readers consumed texts with the supernatural and the horrific,
they also tended to love that sensation that the suspense brought out. Gothic literature
was melancholy. It contained elements of darkness and mystery and was often overly
dramatic. The Gothic creates feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense and tends to the
dramatic and the sensational, like incest, diabolism, and nameless terrors (Potter).
Gothic writers wanted to examine emotion and imagination. Indeed, the fact that
Gothicism is closely related to Romanticism is perfectly clear. Like Romantic literature,
Gothic literature intended to awaken the readers imagination; however, unlike
Romanticism, terror was one of the main devices employed for this effect (Hume).
The Gothic featured accounts of terrifying experiences in ancient castles — experiences
connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps,
screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and the rest. By extension, it came
to designate the macabre, mysterious, fantastic, supernatural, and, again, the terrifying,
especially the pleasurably terrifying, in literature more generally. Closer to the present,
one sees the Gothic pervading Victorian literature (for example, in the novels of Dickens
and the Brontës), American fiction (from Poe and Hawthorne through Faulkner), and of
course the films, television, and videos of our own (in this respect, not-so-modern)
culture.