Southern Gothic

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Southern Gothic is a Subgenre of the Gothic writing style, unique to American literature. Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. Unlike its predecessor, it uses these tools not for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South.

The Southern Gothic author usually avoids perpetuating antebellum stereotypes like the contented slave, the demure Southern belle, the chivalrous gentleman, or the righteous Christian preacher. Instead, the writer takes classic Gothic archetypes, such as the damsel in distress or the heroic knight, and portrays them in a more modern and realistic manner — transforming them into, for example, a spiteful and reclusive spinster, or a white-suited, fan-brandishing lawyer with ulterior motives.

One of the most notable features of the Southern Gothic is "the grotesque" — this includes situations, places, or stock characters that often possess some cringe-inducing qualities, typically racial bigotry and egotistical self-righteousness — but enough good traits that readers find themselves interested nevertheless. While often disturbing, Southern Gothic authors commonly use deeply flawed, grotesque characters for greater narrative range and more opportunities to highlight unpleasant aspects of Southern culture, without being too literal or appearing to be overly moralistic.

This genre of writing is seen in the work of such famous Southern writers as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Harry Crews, Lee Smith, John Kennedy Toole, Cormac McCarthy, Davis Grubb, Barry Hannah, Katherine Ann Porter, Lewis Nordan, and William Gay among others. Tennessee Williams described Southern Gothic as a style that captured "an intuition, of an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience." However, the genre was itself open to criticism, even by its alleged practitioners. As Flannery O'Connor remarked, "anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."[1]

[edit] Notable works

1929 Sartoris & The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

1930 As I Lay Dying & A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

1931 Sanctuary by William Faulkner

1932 Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

1933 God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell

1935 Pylon & Uncle Willy by William Faulkner

1936 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

1937 You Have Seen Their Faces by Erskine Caldwell & Margaret Bourke White

1938 The Unvanquished by William Faulkner

1940 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

1941 Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers

1942 Go Down, Moses & Two Soldiers by William Faulkner

1943 Shingles for the Lord by William Faulkner

1944 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

1946 The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

1947 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

1948 Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote

1951 The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers

1952 Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

1953 The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb

1955 A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Conner

1957 Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams

1958 Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

1959 The Mansion by William Faulkner

1960 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1962 The Reivers by William Faulkner (Pulitzer Prize award)

1965 The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy

1968 Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy

1972 Geronimo Rex by Barry Hannah

1973 Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

1979 Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

1978 Lancelot by Walker Percy

1980 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Pulitzer Prize award)

1983 Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair by Lewis Nordan

1989 And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave

1991 Music of the Swamp by Lewis Nordan

1993 Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

1994 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

1995 The Sharpshooter Blues by Lewis Nordan

1996 The Green Mile by Stephen King

1997 Lightning Song by Lewis Nordan

1998 Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace

1999 The Long Home by William Gay

2000 Tideland by Mitch Cullin

2002 The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

2005 Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest

2006 Wings to the Kingdom by Cherie Priest

2007 Not Flesh 'Nor Feathers by Cherie Preist

2008 Tennyson by Lesley M.M. Blume

[edit] Films

[edit] Television

[edit] Comics and graphic novels

[edit] Music

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ O'Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Eds. Robert and Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, 1969: p. 40

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Gothic"
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