Category: Coffeehouse #3 (Page 2 of 2)

When reading Alan Lloyd Smith on American Gothic, several important ideas was shown in the text and these were the five most important ideas to me when I was reading.

#1. What led to American Gothic was the frontier experience of inherent solitude, potential violence, fear of European subversion, and anxieties about democracy which was new during its time, and the absence of a developed society racial issue concerning both slavery and Native Americans. (Page 4)

#2.  Gothic deals in transgressions and negativity, perhaps in reaction against the optimistic rationalism of its founding era. (Page 5)

#3. Gothic explores and tackles taboos such as religious profanities, demonism, occultism, necromancy, and incest. (Page 6)

#4. Gothic deals with extreme states of past traumas and guilt. (page 6-7)

#5. Gothic exposes the landscape of nature. In time these tropes of atmosphere, architecture, and landscape can become metaphorical to the Gothic setting. (Page 7)

5 most important ideas:

1. The hallmarks of the Gothic include a pushing toward extremes and excess that implies an investigation of limits. In exploring extremes, whether of cruelty, rapacity and fear, or passion and sexual degradation, the Gothic tends to reinforce, if only in a novel’s final pages, culturally prescribed doctrines of morality and propriety. (Pg 5)
2. Gothic interest in extreme states and actions can also be seen to correlate with widespread social anxieties and fears. (Pg 6)
3. Landscapes in the Gothic similarly dwelt on the exposed, inhuman and pitiless nature of mountains, crags, and wastelands. (Pg 7)
4. In Gothic the terror of what might happen, or might be happening, is largely foregrounded over the visceral horror of the event. (Pg 8)
5. One of the great strengths of the Gothic is its ability to articulate the voice of the “others” within its fancy-dress disguise of stylized conversations. (Pg 8)

When I read Alan Lloyd Smith on American Gothic, several important ideas existed that I perceived as crucial for my comprehension of fiction literature.

#1 American Gothic literature emerged from the concepts had existed in works prior to the genre becoming a definitive aspect of the English tradition. (page#3)

#2 American Gothic was emerged as a “subaltern” since it closely resembled English writing styles, but some American writers had been influential to English literature due to cultural similarities. (page#4)

#3 Societal boundaries must be explored and tested in order to determine how the literature becomes Gothic. (Page#5)

#4 American Gothic exposed another facet of the Enlightenment period to which magical concepts were sometimes explained, but uncertainty was reinforced for other occurances during a time where secularism and criticism of religious doctrine was becoming widespread. Science became an important element of American gothic as it was combined with supernatural ideas to convey the story. (page#6)

#5 American gothic utilizes terror to reinforce an idea being conveyed by mere horrific descriptions. Therefore the reader’s are psychologically overwhelmed with the broader reality of the situation in the works. (Page#8).

-Tahirjon (Vince) Alesso

Read Alan Lloyd-Smith on American Gothic and for Coffeehouse #3, write down the five most important ideas in this chapter. Please indicate page number. This will be a fairly short Coffeehouse. Be prepared to discuss one or two of your selections on Monday.

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