ABSTRACT
The gothic is deeply and inevitably ethical, preoccupied as it is with ghosts, monsters, murders, and bizarre circumstances that raise troubling questions about cultural norms and complacencies. The English literary gothic first emerged in the mid-eighteenth century as an ambivalent reassessment of the medieval past and a nativist answer to the hegemony of French-influenced neo-classical aesthetics. The gothic has become an extraordinarily adaptable and diverse international phenomenon. The novel’s historical setting and self-conscious generic affiliations represent a new use of the term “American Gothic. Jean-François Lyotard’s notion of the “differend” offers a useful analogy to the epistemological situation typically staged by the gothic. Grant Wood’s painting is probably the best-known visual example of paradiastole in American culture. Grant Wood’s painting and Gordon Parks’s photo represent an important pre-history to the current re-evaluation of the American Gothic. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
