American Literature / Unit 6 AML 0521 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Gothic Arrives in America
Captions available
The idea
The Gothic brings ruin, secret guilt, madness and the returning dead, and American writers had to import the machinery and find native ground for it. Without castles, they used the forest, the isolated house and the Puritan past, which is why American Gothic so often concerns inherited sin.
In practice
No castles: a forest and a family.
Where people slip
The American version relocates guilt into history.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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