LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 final exam—Answers to Question B1

Matt Chavez

Divisions of the Gothic Text

          Just as the Transcendentalists such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman sought a correspondence to some greater authority or consciousness in the form of the natural and sublime, so too did other writers of the time seek the same correspondence.  For these other writers though, namely Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the venue through which the correspondence is found is less natural and less sublime, instead turning to the supernatural and often ghoulish, in what is commonly seen as the other end of the spectrum for Romantic writing, the Gothic.  A multitude of gothic styles developed in the American Renaissance, covering a number of psychological and spiritual reflections of the human heart and mind.  Where the transcendental writers showed the elevated side of human nature in correspondence to surrounding reality, Gothicism allowed for a raw and unabashed view of man’s darker side, corresponding in displays of natural, societal, and religious constructs.

          One of the strongest sects of Gothicism to emerge in the American Renaissance period is the wilderness gothic, which may not have the same name recognition that the works of Poe carry around the world, but has definite presence in American lore and mythology.  The works of Washington Irving, a notable writer of the wilderness gothic, exist today because of the impact they had on American psychology, securing them as essential American lore.  The wilderness gothic texts  deal with the apparitions which haunt the mind manifesting themselves in the natural world, taking on a dark and ghoulish aspect on the fringes of society.  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow exemplifies this, creating a devil of decapitation to haunt the surrounding forests of Sleepy Hollow.  The Headless Horseman is a manifestation of the town’s latent desire to resist change, but also takes on every mystery the villagers choose not to concern themselves with.  Enclosed and isolated, the village stands alone with the surrounding wilderness reflection hostility within the villagers towards the unknown and that which is not fixed, but also an assumed hostility which any change might bear.  Creating the Headless Horseman, and other apparitions to haunt the forest as well, the village effectively displaces its own psychological faults to an entity outside of themselves.

          Other forms of Gothicism work more psychologically though, showing a correspondence to the characters surroundings without displacing the fact that it is reflected from the said characters.  The works of Poe deal strongly with the haunted mind of his protagonists, resulting in haunted houses and abodes in general, creates a psychological manifestation which the character can actually claim and interact with.  Poe’s short story Ligeia shows this psychological torment manifested in a setting when the protagonist, who shares an obsessive relationship with the title character, loses his loved one to death and subsequently takes up residence in an abbey, grotesquely decorated.  “The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain,” reflects the protagonist’s psychological state, which is undergoing a steady rot and decay and he obsesses over his deceased loved one.  Additionally, the protagonist, at this point, exists in a dream-like stupor, on the edge of consciousness, but closer to the gothic truth which the story delves into.  As Ligeia comes to its conclusion, with Ligeia returning from the dead to animating the dying feverish body of the protagonist’s new partner, elements of the gothic are seen in both this supernatural event as well as the state of mind in which the protagonist experiences it.  Early on in the experience, the protagonist has succumbed to “the passionate waking visions of Ligeia,” showing the edge of consciousness which he exists on, corresponding to and unified with his psychological torment.

          This psychological and traditional European form of Gothicism is also abundant in the poetry which Poe writes.  With superfluous imagery illustrating mythical domains of supernal and haunted design, Poe’s psychologically driven landscapes capture the darker workings of mankind.  The poem “The City in the Sea” shows a sinking civilization, the fall of mankind or perhaps the desolation of the once moral mind, a town descended to a point where only “Hell… / shall do it reverence.”  The poem shows a futility to the creative and productive mind when driven by torment.  And it is Poe’s gothic imagery which best creates this impression for the reader, images of “open fanes and gaping graves / [which] yawn level with the luminous waves.”

          There is a certain religious aspect to Poe’s poem, and though it does not fit into the form itself, it precursors a division of Gothicism which is later expanded by authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, this being the Puritan gothic.  The puritan gothic explores minds similarly haunted like those of Poe’s protagonists or the villagers in Irving’s works, but where the previous writers found developed a correspondence to the surrounding nature or personal abodes, Hawthorne creates his correspondence in religious ceremony and community.  Hawthorne’s story, The Minister’s Black Veil, presents a spiritually tortured Mr. Hooper, a man with “secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide” who manifests his faults in God’s eyes by a black veil which permanently covers his face.  As (TP) states in his/her own response to the question of Gothicism in 2004, “the veil represents the hiding of a mysterious and unknown sin and can be related to the gothic castle and the rim or injustice committed within its walls.” Mr. Hooper’s psychological torment is in plain display and kept close, a way for him to deal with and confront his own sins.  But the black veil also works to reflect the sins of the people Mr. Hooper encounters, who are made quite uncomfortable when confronted with what could easily be their own sins.

          Regardless of whether the focus is on wilderness, the mind, or one’s religious faults, each division of the gothic shares the common trait of finding a correspondence of the haunted human psychology to the surrounding world.  So although the soul is seen as much darker, like the Transcendentalist’s sublime reflection in the natural world, Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne each create a lasting impression of the human soul in an arguably more enticing, literary study of man during the American Renaissance period.