Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of various periods in the critical reception of Poe’s gothic tales. An attempt has been made in it to retrace radical shift in Poe criticism from total “negativism” up to present day critical acclaim. It is stated that recent Poe scholarship stresses the rational grotesque and satiric elements in Poe. I also address the intricate question of the American gothic the status of which is uncertain. Several factors contribute to the uncertain status of the American gothic. One of the factors that makes the gothic so shadowy and nebulous a genre as difficult to define as any gothic ghost is that it can not be seen in abstraction from the other literary forms from whose graves it arises. The American gothic is a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation. As for E.A. Poe and Modifications of “Gothicism”in the 20th Century American Fiction - I try to differentiate between the concepts of “Literary Gothicism “ and “Gothicism “ in Literature”. Thus in order to re-canonize Poe as a canonical literary figure within the American literary canon his gothic tales must be analyzed in relation to European and American National gothic tradition.