edited by Monika Elbert and Wendy Ryden
contributions by Monika Elbert, David Greven, Lisa A. Long, Patricia Luedecke, Steve Marsden, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, Daniel Mrozowski, Charlotte L. Quinney, Alicia Mischa Renfroe, Wendy Ryden, Gary Totten, Christine A. Wooley, Stephen Arch, Dennis Berthold, Kenneth K. Brandt, Donna M. Campbell and Dara Downey
introduction by Monika Elbert and Wendy Ryden
University of Alabama Press, 2017
Cloth: 978-0-8173-1937-3 | eISBN: 978-0-8173-9053-2 | Paper: 978-0-8173-6059-7
Library of Congress Classification PS374.G68H38 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.0872909

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
An innovative collection of essays examining the sometimes paradoxical alignment of Realism and Naturalism with the Gothic in American literature to highlight their shared qualities

Following the golden age of British Gothic in the late eighteenth century, the American Gothic’s pinnacle is often recognized as having taken place during the decades of American Romanticism. However, Haunting Realities explores the period of American Realism—the end of the nineteenth century—to discover evidence of fertile ground for another age of Gothic proliferation.
 
At first glance, “Naturalist Gothic” seems to be a contradiction in terms. While the Gothic is known for its sensational effects, with its emphasis on horror and the supernatural, the doctrines of late nineteenth-century Naturalism attempted to move away from the aesthetics of sentimentality and stressed sobering, mechanistic views of reality steeped in scientific thought and the determinism of market values and biology. Nonetheless, what binds Gothicism and Naturalism together is a vision of shared pessimism and the perception of a fearful, lingering presence that ominously haunts an impending modernity. Indeed, it seems that in many Naturalist works reality is so horrific that it can only be depicted through Gothic tropes that prefigure the alienation and despair of modernism.
 
In recent years, research on the Gothic has flourished, yet there has been no extensive study of the links between the Gothic and Naturalism, particularly those which stem from the early American Realist tradition. Haunting Realities is a timely volume that addresses this gap and is an important addition to scholarly work on both the Gothic and Naturalism in the American literary tradition.