The Gothic South
Professor Susan Castillo
Semester 1, 2012-2013
Seminar timetable: tba
Office hours: tba
Email: Susan.Castillo@kcl.ac.uk
Course description:
The South is a region that has always been obsessed with boundaries, whether
territorial (the Mason-Dixon line), or those related to gender, social class, sexual
orientation, and particularly race. In this course, we will examine the ways in
which the grotesques, monsters, freaks and doppelgangers that populate the
Southern Gothic are directly linked to the region's past, particularly to its
difficulties in coming to terms with its history of slavery and with interracial
sexuality. Authors to be studied include Edgar Allan Poe, George Washington
Cable, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery
O’Connor, Truman Capote,Tennessee Williams, and Natasha Trethewey.
Course aims:
To develop students’conceptual abilities and capacity for critical
analysis;
To promote and develop clarity and persuasiveness in argument
and expression;
To acquaint students with leading exponents and key texts of the
Southern Gothic tradition
Intended learning outcomes:
On completing this course, students should possess
Knowledge of the historical and literary circumstances from which
the Southern Gothic tradition emerges
Familiarity with and critical awareness of representative Southern
Gothic authors and texts;
An acquaintance with relevant secondary criticism, and the
capacity to deploy critical sources with accuracy and clarity;
An ability to use electronic media and Internet bibliographical
sources intelligently.
Course assessment:
100% of final mark: One essay of 4,000 words to be submitted by noon on
(date)
Course schedule:
Week 1: Edgar Allan Poe “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The System of Dr. Tarr
and Professor Fether”,
Week 2: George Washington Cable, “Jean-ah Poquelin”, “Belles Demoiselles
Plantation”, “Madame Delphine”
Week 3: Charles Chesnutt, “Po’Sandy”, “The Wife of his Youth”, “The Sheriff’s
Children”, “Dave’s Neckliss”
Week 4: William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”; Absalom! Absalom
Week 5: Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Week 6. Flannery O’Connor, “Good Country People”, “A Good Man is Hard to
Find”, “The Artificial Nigger”;
Week 7. Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Week 8. Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms
Week 9. Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard
Week 10. Essay consultation week.
Bibliography:
George Washington Cable, , “Jean-ah Poquelin”, “Belles Demoiselles Plantation”
Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms
Charles Chesnutt, “Po’Sandy”, “The Wife of his Youth”, The Marrow of Tradition
William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”, “Dry September”, “That Evening Sun”
Absalom! Absalom!
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood, “The Artificial Nigger”, “Good Country People”
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The System of Dr. Tarr and
Professor Fether”, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard: Poems
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Many of these texts are available online.
Secondary Bibliography
Houston Baker and Dana Nelson, Violence, the Body, and “The South” (2001)
Harold Bloom, Flannery O’Connor (1986)
Fred Botting, Gothic (2006)
Philip Butcher, George W. Cable (1962)
James Cobb, ed. Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (2005)
Kevin Hayes, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe (2002)
Vincent Freimarck, Race and the American Romantics (1971)
Sarah Gleeson-White, Strange Bodies: Gender and Identity in the Novels of Carson
McCullers (2003)
Justin Edwards, Gothic Passages: Racial Ambiguity and the American Gothic (2001)
Joseph Flora, Lucinda Hardwick Mackethan and Todd W. Taylor, eds., The
Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and
Motifs (2002)
Sarah Gordon, Flannery O’Connor: The Obedient Imagination (2001)
Richard Gray, ed. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South
(2004)
Jan Nordby Gretlund and Karl-Heinz Westarp, Flannery O’Connor’s Radical Reality
(2006)
George Handley, Postslavery Literatures in the Americas: Family Portraits in Black
and White (2000)
D. R. Jansson, “Internal Orientalism in America: W. J. Cash’s The Mind of the South
and the Spatial Construction of American National Identity”. Political Geography,
Vol. 22, no. 3, 2003, pp 293-316.
Anne Goodwyn Jones, Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South,
1859-1936 (1981)
Anne Goodwyn Jones, Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern Texts (1997)
J. Kennedy, Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race (2001)
Elizabeth Kerr, William Faulkner’s Gothic Domain (1979)
Philip Kolin, Tennessee Williams: A Guide to Research and Performance (1998)
Barbara Ladd, Nationalism and the Color Line in George W. Cable, Mark Twain, and
William Faulkner (1996)
Robert Martin, ed. Critical Essays on Tennessee Williams (1997)
Joseph McElrath, Critical Essays on Charles W. Chesnutt (1999)
Michael Moon, Subjects and Citizens: Nation, Race and Gender from Oroonoko to
Anita Hill (1995)
Stephen P. Nadler, “Untragic Mulatto: Charles Chesnutt and the Discourse of
Whiteness,” American Literary History, vol. 8. no. 3 (Autumn 1996)
Michael Pallen, Gentleman Callers, Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, and MidTwentieth Century Drama (2005)
Matthew Roudane, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams (1997)
Louis Rubin, George W. Cable: The Life and Times of a Southern Heretic (1969)
Josyanne Savigneau, Carson McCullers: A Life (2001)
Vlasopolos, Anca, “Authorizing History: Victimization in A Streetcar Named Desire,
Theatre Journal, vol. 38, no. 3, Performance of Textual History (Oct. 1986) ppp322338. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3208047