Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic

Challenging the widely held assumption that gothic literature is mainly about fear Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet argues that the American Gothic and gothic literature in general is also about judgment. Analyzing canonical works by Poe Hawthorne Melville Gilman and James Monnet persuasively argues that these authors' concerns about slavery gender and sexuality tacitly inform works that deal explicitly with less controversial subjects.