The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic

by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Editor)

The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic offers an accessible overview to both the breadth and depth of the American Gothic tradition. This subgenre features works from many of America's best-known authors: Edgar Allan Poe, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor. Authored by leading experts in the field, the introduction and sixteen chapters explore the American Gothic chronologically, in relation to different social groups, in connection with different geographic regions, and in different media, including children's literature, poetry, drama, film, television, and gaming. This Companion provides a rich and thorough analysis of the American Gothic tradition from a twenty-first-century standpoint, and will be a key resource undergraduates, graduate students, and professional researchers interested in this topic.

Genres: Gothic, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, History, Literature

272 pages, Paperback

Published November 23, 2017

Reviews

[Z. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely better than the earlier volume on Gothic fiction more generally, with far less academic self-gratification and more of an overview feel, as is—IMO—more appropriate for a "companion" like this. The collection does weaken the closer it gets to the modern day, when there's no established canon to draw from and the authors evidently feel more free to explore whatever rabbit holes interest them, no matter how obscure or irrelevant they may seem to the reader. And as is so often the case in scholarship on the Gothic, there is also sometimes a sense that absolutely everything—film noir, high modernism, every subgenre of contemporary horror, Little Women—can and will be wedged into a "Gothic" box so long as it suits the purposes of the essayist, even as essential texts and authors often get short shrift. (A single paragraph on Flannery O'Connor, an analysis of one Shirley Jackson short story but none of her novels, zero discussion of popular fiction authors like Stephen King, Anne Rice, Dean Koontz, or Stephanie Meyer who are, whatever your opinion of them, working in an indisputably Gothic mode and selling millions of books in the process...) On the other hand, there are some truly excellent entries and passages here (my favorite was Charles L. Crow's piece on the Southern Gothic), and I found enough compelling insights and trivia throughout, even in essays I wasn't crazy about, to remain consistently engaged.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays offering an overview of American Gothic, which nobody ever actually bothers to define, but which seems to be pretty co-extensive with "horror." The essays ranged from quite good to the one on Gothic film and TV, which I found myself yelling at a lot.

[Marina Garrido · Rating 3 out of 5]

As mentioned in previous reviews some of the chapters were better researched than others. A couple employ such poor logic and go so much out of the cannon of the novels being discussed that it’s laughable. Huge gaps when it comes to authors, I mean, you can be as elitist and anti-Stephen King as you want, but to mention his work as clearly gothic in the introduction and then not have a chapter covering it in depth is just ridiculous.

[Shelby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some chapters much better than others--also huge gaps in timelines and research that I found particularly lazy. Weird oversights throughout.

[Sarah]

I feel like all of the essays were written in German and then translated by someone who’s first language was German because the sentence structure is excruciating

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine collection of short essays exploring a diverse array of topics surrounding the American Gothic genre and its various elements. Weinstock does a remarkable job here of marshalling his sources to provide a strong and far-reaching overview of the genre from its inception through to the present day. The essays are divided into three sections: periods, identities and locations, and genre and media, with the first being the most traditional and the last being perhaps the weakest, feeling more descriptive than analytical. A sample of the topics include female and queer gothic; poetry and drama; and modernism and romanticism.