American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction
University of Wisconsin Press, 1999
eISBN: 978-0-299-26873-2 | Cloth: 978-0-87972-789-5 | Paper: 978-0-87972-790-1
Library of Congress Classification PS374.H33B35 1999
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.009355
eISBN: 978-0-299-26873-2 | Cloth: 978-0-87972-789-5 | Paper: 978-0-87972-790-1
Library of Congress Classification PS374.H33B35 1999
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.009355
ABOUT THIS BOOK | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
When Edgar Allan Poe set down the tale of the accursed House of Usher in 1839, he also laid the foundation for a literary tradition that has assumed a lasting role in American culture. “The House of Usher” and its literary progeny have not lacked for tenants in the century and a half since: writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Stephen King have taken rooms in the haunted houses of American fiction. Dale Bailey traces the haunted house tale from its origins in English gothic fiction to the paperback potboilers of the present, highlighting the unique significance of the house in the domestic, economic, and social ideologies of our nation. The author concludes that the haunted house has become a powerful and profoundly subversive symbol of everything that has gone nightmarishly awry in the American Dream.
See other books on: Ghost stories, American | Home in literature | Horror tales, American | National characteristics, American, in literature | Popular literature
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