Haunting realities : naturalist Gothic and American realism

Resource Information

The work Haunting realities : naturalist Gothic and American realism represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Haunting realities : naturalist Gothic and American realism

Title remainder

naturalist Gothic and American realism

Statement of responsibility

edited by Monika Elbert and Wendy Ryden

Contributor

• Elbert, Monika M., (Monika Maria), 1956-
• Ryden, Wendy

Editor

• Elbert, Monika M., (Monika Maria), 1956-
• Ryden, Wendy

Subject

• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Gothic fiction (Literary genre), American
• Gothic fiction (Literary genre), American -- History and criticism
• LITERARY CRITICISM -- American | General
• Naturalism in literature
• Naturalism in literature
• Realism in literature
• Realism in literature

Genre

• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

Haunting Realities: Naturalist Gothic and American Realism is 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

Cataloging source

N$T

Dewey number

813/.0872909

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

LC call number

PS374.G68

LC item number

H38 2017eb

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

• dictionaries
• bibliography

Series statement

Studies in American literary realism and naturalism