Garrulous, outraged, baffled ghosts: Southern Gothic portraits from the novel Absalom, Absalom! (1936), by William Faulkner
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1984-1124.i39p184-209Keywords:
Modernism, Fragmentation, American Novel, Southern Gothic, William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!Abstract
This article proposes a reading of Southern Gothic literature, a term used by critics to describe works produced in the American South between the end of World War I and the 1950s. Firstly, we address the ambiguity of the term "gothic" when applied to Southern writing and challenge the critical tendency to reduce the Southern Literary Renaissance to Gothic elements. To this end, we distinguish between the gothic and the grotesque, an aesthetic category that gained prominence among female writers who followed in Faulkner's footsteps, such as Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor. We then turn our attention to William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom!, often cited as the quintessential example of Southern Gothic. By examining the thematic and formal aspects of this work, we provide an overview of Southern Gothic and its significance in addressing the social and historical issues of the South. We argue that horror serves as a powerful means of portraying social reality.
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