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American Gothic Fiction is a subgenre of gothic Fiction. Elements specific to American Gothic include: rationality/rational vs irrational, puritanism, guilt, Das Unheimliche (strangeness within the familiar as defined by Sigmund Freud), abhumans, ghosts, monsters, and domestic abjection. The roots of these concepts lay in a past riddled with slavery, a fear of racial mixing (miscegenation), hostile Native American relations, their subsequent genocide, and the daunting wilderness present at the American frontier. American Gothic is often devoid of castles and objects which allude to a civilized history. Differentiating between horror and terror is important in the study of these texts. == Analysis of major themes == The inability of many Gothic characters to overcome perversity by rational thought is quintessential American Gothic.〔Allan Lloyd Smith, (''American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction'' ) pp 65-69 (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004)〕 It is not uncommon for a protagonist to be sucked into the realm of madness because of his or her preference for the irrational. A tendency such as this flies in the face of higher reason and seems to mock transcendentalist thinking as outlined by "Common Sense (pamphlet)" and ''The Age of Reason''. Also, one cannot ignore the contemporary Gothic themes of mechanism and automation that rationalism and logic lead to. Puritan imagery, particularly that of hell, acted as potent brain candy for authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.〔George Parsons Lathop, (''A Study of Hawthorne'' ) pp 300-309 (Scholarly Press, 1970)〕 The dark and nightmarish visions the Puritan culture of condemnation, reinforced by shame and guilt, created a lasting impact on the collective consciousness. Notions of predestination and original sin added to the doom and gloom of traditional Puritan values. This perspective and its underlying hold on American society ripened the blossoming of stories like "The Pit and the Pendulum", "Young Goodman Brown", and ''The Scarlet Letter''. The Dungeons and endless corridors that are a hallmark of European Gothic are far removed from American Gothic in which castles are replaced with caves. Lloyd-Smith reinterprets ''Moby Dick'' to make this point convincingly.〔Allan Lloyd Smith, (''American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction'' ) pp. 79-87 (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004)〕 Early settlers were overcome by fear linked to the unexplored territory which surrounded, and in some cases, engulfed them. Fear of the unknown stemming from environmental factors like darkness and vastness is notable in Charles Brockden Brown's ''Edgar Huntly''. The emergence of the “abhuman” in American Gothic Fiction was closely coupled with Darwinism.〔Allan Lloyd Smith, (''American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction'' ) page 114 (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004)〕 Ideas of evolution or devolution of a species; new biological knowledge and technological advancement created a fertile environment for many to question their essential humanity. Parallels between humans and every other living thing on the planet were made obvious by the aforementioned. This is manifest in stories like H.P. Lovecraft’s "The Outsider" and Nicholson Baker's "Subsoil". Ghosts and monsters are closely related to this theme, they function as the spiritual equivalent of the abhuman and may be evocative of unseen realities, as in ''The Bostonians''. Julia Kristeva's explanation of jouissance and abjection is employed by American Gothic authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman.〔Allan Lloyd Smith, (''American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction'' ) pp.94-108 (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004)〕 Kristeva theorizes that the expulsion of all things defiling, much like a corpse, is a common coping mechanism for humanity.〔 Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" exploits this concept. Furthermore, "The Yellow Wallpaper" reads like a social commentary on the oppressive conditions women suffered in their home lives at the turn of the century. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「American Gothic Fiction」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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