Some of these characteristics are exploring madness, decay and despair, continuing pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and continued racial hostilities. However, the setting of these works are distinctly Southern. There are many characteristics in Southern Gothic Literature that relate back to its parent genre of American Gothic and even to European Gothic. Warped rural communities replaced the sinister plantations of an earlier age and in the works of leading figures such as William Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor, the representation of the South blossomed into an absurdist critique of modernity as a whole. Thus unlike its parent genre, it uses the Gothic tools not solely for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South – Gothic elements often taking place in a magic realist context rather than a strictly fantastical one. The Southern Gothic style employs macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American South. She included the authors in what she called the “Southern Gothic School” in 1935, stating that their work was filled with “aimless violence” and “fantastic nightmares.” It was so negatively viewed at first that Eudora Welty said, “They better not call me that!” Characteristics Ellen Glasgow used the term in this way when she referred to the writings of Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner. The term “Southern Gothic” was originally used as pejorative and dismissive. It left a vacuum in both values and religion that became filled with poverty due to defeat in the Civil war and reconstruction, racism, excessive violence, and hundreds of different denominations resulting from the theological divide that separated the country over the issue of slavery. The thematic material was largely a result of the culture existing in the South following the collapse of the Confederacy. The genre came together, however, only in the 20th century, when dark romanticism, Southern humor, and the new literary naturalism merged into a new and powerful form of social critique. OriginsĮlements of a Gothic treatment of the South were apparent in the 19th century, ante- and post-bellum, in the grotesques of Henry Clay Lewis and the de-idealized visions of Mark Twain. Due to the era that many of these stories were written, many include very racist elements and themes. Common themes in Southern Gothic literature include deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters who may be involved in hoodoo, ambivalent gender roles, decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or stemming from poverty, alienation, crime, or violence.
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