ENGL120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Edgar Allen, Stereotype
22 Aug 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
New american gothic is said to deal in landscapes of the mind, settings which are distorted by the pressure of the principal characters" psychological obsessions. We are given little or no access to an objective world; instead we are immersed in the psyche of the protagonist, often through sophisticated use of first-person narratives. It may or may not be coincidence that writers and settings alike have connections with the american south; in one way or another, feelings of degeneracy abound. The world portrayed are ones infested with psychic and social decay the crucial tone is one of desensitised acquiescence in the horror of obsession and prevalent insanity . David punter, the literature of terror, 1995. Context: product of industrial capitalism: new methods of paper making, stereotyping, the power press, economies of scale; the mass production of all types of written texts, increased literacy; mass readership. Control: significance for morality + individual responsibility.
