Whilst the seeking of allegory within a text frequently risks appearing forced and more reflective of a critic’s own philosophies, there is, in fact, substantial historical and textual evidence to suggest Poe was ‘aware of market trends’ and ‘capitalized on the conventions of slavery in his sensationalist fiction’ (Goddu, 2002). Poe’s short-story The Black Cat, published in 1843, can be read as a racial allegory and a critique on the severe Southern household in its relation to slavery. Despite never achieving much economic success throughout his career, the writer captured the imagination of readers of the time, the 1845 poem The Raven catapulting the author to national fame.įor these reasons, Poe is an incredibly revealing author in regards to his context, for within the strange and grisly works there undoubtedly lies indications of the national Zeitgeist and political landscape of the time. Poe’s macabre tales initiated an evolution in the Gothic genre and horror writing, emphasizing the psychological over the supernatural moving from the mysteries of archaic medieval castles to the mysteries lurking within the common domestic home highlighting the terror and horror that humans inflict upon other humans, as opposed to otherworldly beasts or antagonistic creatures essentially progressing away from the fantastical and metaphorical to horrific realism, whilst still maintaining the fundamental tone and characteristics of the Gothic genre and its myriad of motifs, brought to a level that better related to the audience contemporary to the author’s historical and geographical context. Authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving introduced the concept of American Gothicism through their utilization of superstition and fear that was specific to their nation Hawthorne’s terrifying portrayal of Puritanical life in The Minister’s Black Veil and The Scarlet Letter and Irving’s headless ghost of a Hessian soldier, evoking post-American-Revolution paranoia, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.Įdgar Allan Poe arguably the finest writer of the American Gothic genre in the 19th century and one of the most influential authors of the nation’s literary history. Lovecraft proposes in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature that emotion is ‘fear’ (1927).Īmerican Gothic writing began in the 19th century as a reaction the transcendentalist movement which was established early in the century. From its very origins, we can see that the Gothic literary genre is fundamentally reflective of the political, social and philosophical attitudes of its time, as its purpose of communicating terror and horror allow modern critics and readers a telling glimpse into the ‘oldest and strongest emotion of mankind’, as seminal Gothic horror author H.P.
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English literature began its contribution to the culture of Gothic revival in 1764 with Horace Walpole’s incredibly influential novel The Castle of Otranto, which, whilst can be read as sensationalizing Protestant suspicions of Catholicism and its repressed debauchery, employs a medieval nostalgia as a reaction to a new revolution, which began earlier that decade: the Industrial. This ran concurrent with the Jacobite uprisings and Civil War of the 1740’s, as the Catholic monarchy reared back from its defeat in the 1600s with desire to reclaim the throne.
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In England, earlier that century, a cultural nostalgia began and coincided with the country’s own state of political upheaval, foremost with architecture: the Gothic revival. Boym refers to the French and Russian revolutions’ influence on cultural nostalgia a Romanic revival flourished throughout the fashion of France following the nation’s revolt, as the toga became a symbol of liberty and the red bonnet an expression of political radicalism, notably worn through the streets of London by the Romantic poet William Blake. The highly innovative studies of Russian philosopher Sveltana Boym, which explore the human psyche and its relationship to the past, argue that ‘nostalgia has historically coincided with revolution’, (Askenaizer, 2016).