Society, Culture, and the Gothic | Teresa A. Goddu (Essay Date 1997)
TERESA A. GODDU (ESSAY DATE 1997)
SOURCE: Goddu, Teresa A. "Haunting Back: Harriet Jacobs, African-American Narrative, and the Gothic." In Gothic America: Narrative, History, and the Nation, pp. 131-52. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
In the following essay, Goddu explores how the Gothic is used in literature by African Americans—and by white writers who write about the African American experience—to express the horrors of slavery and racism.
Early American writers, Henry James and Nathaniel Hawthorne, complained bitterly about the bleakness and flatness of the American scene. But I think that if they were alive, they'd feel at home in modern America. True, we have no great church in America; our national traditions are still of such a sort that we are not wont to brag of them … we have no rich symbols, no colorful rituals. But we do have in the Negro the embodiment of a past tragic enough to appease...
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