-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Joseph Fruscione, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic: Gender and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century American Literature., Notes and Queries, Volume 59, Issue 1, March 2012, Pages 146–147, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjr265
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
MONNET gives a clear historical view of the ‘American Gothic’ as constructed literarily, critically, and culturally through selected works by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The text, amply but not excessively footnoted, reveals Monnet's awareness of past and current critical conversations—for example constructions of an ‘American Gothic’ and (debates about) Poe's and Hawthorne's racial attitudes. The 19-page bibliography promises additional resources for Americanist scholars and student-writers researching this era and its cultural narratives.
For Monnet, these authors reveal an ideological-political engagement largely ‘by analogy’, a signature gothic gesture (28). Poe and Hawthorne explored notions of race and slavery, whereas Melville, James, and Gilman wrestled with gender, sexuality, and knowledge—all in analogous–ambiguous ways appropriate to gothic fiction. Yet, given the superlative view of Emily Dickinson as ‘the most gothic of American poets’ (27), Monnet's study would have benefitted from a chapter—even a significant section—on Dickinson, particularly her motifs of otherness, desire, and ambiguity. I also would have liked to see Monnet revisit the claims of earlier chapters in her later ones—such as Poe's gender–narration dialectic vis-à-vis James and Gilman, or a deeper view of Hawthorne's and Melville's characterization of the ‘dark’ female other. The synthesis, though significant, is less demonstrated than implied. Despite this and the elision of Dickinson—perhaps to maintain sharper focus on gothic fiction?—Monnet's text is a strong, clearly argued work of American literary scholarship.
