The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic

by Susan Castillo Street (Editor), Charles L. Crow (Editor)

Overview

This book examines ‘Southern Gothic’ - a term that describes some of the finest works of the American Imagination. But what do ‘Southern’ and ‘Gothic’ mean, and how are they related? Traditionally seen as drawing on the tragedy of slavery and loss, ‘Southern Gothic’ is now a richer, more complex subject. Thirty-five distinguished scholars explore the Southern Gothic, under the categories of Poe and his Legacy; Space and Place; Race; Gender and Sexuality; and Monsters and Voodoo.
The essays examine slavery and the laws that supported it, and stories of slaves who rebelled and those who escaped. Also present are the often-neglected issues of the Native American presence in the South, socioeconomic class, the distinctions among the several regions of the South, same-sex relationships, and norms of gendered behaviour. This handbook covers not only iconic figures of Southern literature but also other less well-known writers, and examines gothic imageryin film and in contemporary television programmes such as True Blood and True Detective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349693337
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	10/31/2018
Edition description:	1st ed. 2016
Pages:	505
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Susan Castillo Street is Harriet Beecher Stowe Professor Emerita, King’s College London, UK. She has published extensively on writing of the Early Americas, Native American writing, nineteenth-century American literature, and the Southern Gothic. She is also a published poet and literary translator.

Charles L. Crow is Professor Emeritus of English at Bowling Green State University, USA. His publications include A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America (2003), American Gothic (2009), American Gothic: An Anthology From Salem Witchcraft to H. P. Lovecraft (2012), and A Companion to American Gothic (2013).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments.- Notes on Contributors.- Introduction.- PART I: EDGAR ALLAN POE AND HIS LEGACY.- 1. Edgar Allan Poe and the Southern Gothic; Tom F. Wright.- 2. Inside the Dark House: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! and Southern Gothic; Richard Gray.- 3. Dreamland: Antebellum Southern Women Poets and Poe; Paula Bernat Bennett.- 4. Southern Gothic: Haunted Houses; Carol Margaret Davison.- 5. The Globalisation of the Gothic South; Edward Sugden.- PART II: SPACE AND PLACE IN SOUTHERN GOTHIC.- 6. Gothic Landscapes of the South; Matthew Wynn Sivils.- 7. Southern Hauntings: Kate Chopin's Fiction; Janet Beer and Avril Horner.- 8. Gothic Appalachia; Sarah Robertson.- 9. New Immigration and the Southern Gothic; Nahem Yousaf.- 10. Flannery O'Connor and the Realism of Distance ; Éric Savoy.- 11. Florida Gothic: Shadows in the Sunshine State; Bev Hogue.- 12. Gothic Cuba andthe Trans-American South; Ivonne M. Garcia.- 13. A Long View of History: Cormac McCarthy's Gothic Vision; Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr..- 14. New Orleans as Gothic Capital; Sherry R. Truffin.- 15. George Washington Cable and Grace King; Owen Robinson.- 16. Francophone Gothic Melodramas; Bill Marshall.- PART III: RACE AND SOUTHERN GOTHIC.- 17. Uncanny Plantations: The Repeating Gothic; Michael Kreyling.- 18. Slave Narratives and Slave Revolts; Maisha Wester.- 19. The Tragic Mulatto and Passing; Emily Clark.- 20. Law and the Gothic in the Slaveholding South; Ellen Weinauer.- 21. Charles Chesnutt's Reparative Gothic; Christine A. Wooley.- 22. Jim Crow Gothic: Richard Wright's Southern Nightmare; Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet.- 23. The Turn from the Gothic to Southern Liberalism in To Kill a Mockingbird; Michael L. Manson.- 24. Raising the Indigenous Undead; Eric Gary Anderson.- PART IV: GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN SOUTHERN GOTHIC TEXTS.- 25. Twisted Sisters: The Monstrous Women of Southern Gothic; Kellie Donovan-Condron.- 26. Ellen Glasgow's Gothic Heroes and Monsters; Mark Graves.- 27. The Gothic and the Grotesque in the Novels of Carson McCullers; Dara Downey.- 28. 'The room must evoke some ghosts': Tennessee Williams; Stephen Matterson.- 29. Truman Capote’s Gothic Politics; Michael P. Bibler.- PART V: MONSTERS, VAMPIRES AND VOODOO.- 30. Southern Vampires: Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris and True Blood; Ken Gelder.- 31. Voodoo and Conjure as Gothic Realism; Anne Schroder.- 32. 'Nothing So Mundane as Ghosts': Eudora Welty and the Gothic; Sarah Ford.- 33. Talismans of Shadows and Mantles of Light: Contemporary Forms of the Southern Female Gothic; Peggy Dunn Bailey.- 34. Shadows on the Small Screen: The Televisuality and Generic Hybridity of Southern Gothic; Brigid Cherry.- 35. The Southern Gothic in Film: An Overview; David Greven.- Index.-

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The Southern Gothic represents, truly, the dark side of a dark genre. Though ostensibly defined by regional geography, its implications arguably haunt the genre permeating national boundaries, temporal distinctions and those representative divisions associated with the many media through which Gothic has historically expressed its unease. This authoritative and comprehensive collection surveys the breadth of Southern Gothic authors, from the paradigmatic Poe to the iconoclastic McCarthy, through the short story and novel to stage, cinema and television, taking in those unique and historical landmarks – slavery, voodoo, degeneration – that Southern Gothic has redefined and revitalised for a new century. The editors have brought together a work of distinction: the Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic will be an essential tool not merely for scholars of American writing, but also for any critic engaged in the serious study of this important literary tradition.” (William Hughes, Bath Spa University, UK)

“Darkness in the Sunshine State, tropical chills, hell on high water, haunted plantations and sinister swamps all come together in this exciting new collection to offer readers insights into a Gothic sense of place in the American South. Covering analyses of a range of diverse authors (such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Chesnutt, Tennessee Williams and Eudora Welty) and subjects (such as New Orleans vampires, Caribbean Voodoo, slave revolts and racial passing), this book is vital reading for students and scholars of Gothic literature and culture.” (Justin Edwards, University of Surrey, UK)

“The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic will prove absolutely indispensible to anyone with a scholarly, teaching, or readerly interest in the subject area. The essays featured here cover an impressive and truly representative range of individual authors, topics, and themes, and combine to provide a truly panoramic (and up-to-date) survey of the Southern Gothic in its many manifestations.” (Bernice Murphy, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)

“Given its wide range of focal points and the insightful excellence – even eloquence – of its 36 essays, this is now the “go-to” volume to start guiding students, their instructors, and other interested readers into the astonishing variety and haunting complexity of the American “Southern Gothic” in literature, film, and television.” (Jerrold E. Hogle, University of Arizona, USA)

“The range of this book, in terms of history and geography, issues of gender and race, and the various forms of monstrosity is truly extraordinary, and the authors demonstrate, with objectivity and yet also with political acumen, how Gothic has figured as a form of representation across all the contested issues with which the South has had to deal. A work of deep and challenging scholarship, which will enlighten scholars of the Gothic and scholars of American history alike.” (David Punter, University of Bristol, UK)

Editorial Reviews

This is … an invaluable collection of essays covering an ample range of topics, from the origins to the legacies of Southern Gothic. As such, the volume is a ‘must’ for current and future specialists in Southern Gothic, a field that still has enormous scope for further exploration.” (Federico Boni, revenantjournal.com, Issue 6, 2021)

From the Publisher