Unreliable narrators and "unnatural sensations" : irony and conscience in Edgar Allan Poe -- "Everywhere-- a cross--and nastiness at the foot of it" : history, ethics, and slavery in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun -- "Thy catching nobleness unsexes me, my brother" : queer knowledge in Herman Melville's Pierre -- "I was queer company enough--quite as queer as the company I received" : the queer gothic of Henry James and Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Summary
Challenging the widely held assumption that gothic literature is mainly about fear, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet argues that the American Gothic, and gothic literature in general, is also about judgment. Analyzing canonical works by Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Gilman, and James, Monnet persuasively argues that these authors' concerns about slavery, gender, and sexuality tacitly inform works that deal explicitly with less controversial subjects
