Home > Gothic Literature > Oates, Joyce Carol (1938 -) - James Egan (Essay Date 1990)

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JAMES EGAN (ESSAY DATE 1990)

SOURCE: Egan, James. "'Romance of a Darksome Type': Versions of the Fantastic in the Novels of Joyce Carol Oates." Studies in Weird Fiction 7 (1990): 12-21.

In the following essay, Egan discusses Oates's combination of "the parodic, the visionary, and the apocalyptic, into a Gothic delineation of the American Dream" in Wonderland, Son of the Morning, Bellefleur, A Bloodsmoor Romance, and Mysteries of Winterthurn.

During the 1970s a critical consensus began to take shape about the fiction of Joyce Carol Oates, namely that her work was moving away from "external", realistic experiences toward the fantastic and visionary (Walker 27; Wagner xix). "Her writings," Mary Kathryn Grant has suggested, "presuppose a nightmare world which challenges the very limits of man's endurance and tries his spirit to the breaking point" (2). Increasingly, this "nightmare world" has assumed...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Joyce Carol Oates (Story Date 1996)
4. General Commentary
   1. James Egan (Essay Date 1990)
5. Title Commentary
   1. Night-Side
6. Further Reading

1. Joyce Carol Oates