American Gothic

American gothic moves the European castle towards the wooden house, the forest and the Puritan conscience. Poe shuts his narrators in with their own crimes and invents the detective story along the way, Hawthorne makes a whole community sew a letter onto a woman's breast, Bierce stops time during a hanged man's fall, Irving lets a headless horseman loose in a valley. Lovecraft, later, replaces the devil with indifferent gods from elsewhere. Fear here comes less from the supernatural than from guilt.

works 5

• Short storiesThe Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.Washington Irving · 1819An American looks at old England, and slips two American legends in among his sketches.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryThe RavenEdgar Allan Poe · 1845For its author, the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetic subject there is; these verses entrust the mourning to a bird that knows only one word.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelThe Scarlet LetterNathaniel Hawthorne · 1850A Puritan community punishes the offence in public and gives shame a visible form, worn on the body. The novel looks at what it costs the woman who displays it, and the man who hides it.LiteraturePublic domain
• Short storiesAn Occurrence at Owl Creek BridgeAmbrose Bierce · 1890A former Union soldier, the author takes as his hero a Southern planter about to be hanged by the soldiers of his own side.LiteraturePublic domain
• Short storiesThe Call of CthulhuH.P. Lovecraft · 1928The story advances through assembled documents: an object, articles, a police report, a sailor's journal.Literature