The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic

This book examines `Southern Gothic - a term that describes some of the finest works of the American Imagination. But what do `Southern and `Gothic mean, and how are they related? Traditionally seen as drawing on the tragedy of slavery and loss, `Southern Gothic is now a richer, more complex subject. Thirty-five distinguished scholars explore the Southern Gothic, under the categories of Poe and his Legacy; Space and Place; Race; Gender and Sexuality; and Monsters and Voodoo. The essays examine slavery and the laws that supported it, and stories of slaves who rebelled and those who escaped. Also present are the often-neglected issues of the Native American presence in the South, socioeconomic class, the distinctions among the several regions of the South, same-sex relationships, and norms of gendered behaviour. This handbook covers not only iconic figures of Southern literature but also other less well-known writers, and examines gothic imageryin film and in contemporary television programmes such as True Blood and True Detective.

Acknowledgments. - Notes on Contributors. - Introduction. - PART I: EDGAR ALLAN POE AND HIS LEGACY. - 1. Edgar Allan Poe and the Southern Gothic; Tom F. Wright. - 2. Inside the Dark House: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! and Southern Gothic; Richard Gray. - 3. Dreamland: Antebellum Southern Women Poets and Poe; Paula Bernat Bennett. - 4. Southern Gothic: Haunted Houses; Carol Margaret Davison. - 5. The Globalisation of the Gothic South; Edward Sugden. - PART II: SPACE AND PLACE IN SOUTHERN GOTHIC. - 6. Gothic Landscapes of the South; Matthew Wynn Sivils. - 7. Southern Hauntings: Kate Chopin' s Fiction; Janet Beer and Avril Horner. - 8. Gothic Appalachia; Sarah Robertson. - 9. New Immigration and the Southern Gothic; Nahem Yousaf. - 10. Flannery O' Connor and the Realism of Distance ; Éric Savoy. - 11. Florida Gothic: Shadows in the Sunshine State; Bev Hogue. - 12. Gothic Cuba andthe Trans-American South; Ivonne M. Garcia. - 13. A Long View of History: Cormac McCarthy' s Gothic Vision; Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr. . - 14. New Orleans as Gothic Capital; Sherry R. Truffin. - 15. George Washington Cable and Grace King; Owen Robinson. - 16. Francophone Gothic Melodramas; Bill Marshall. - PART III: RACE AND SOUTHERN GOTHIC. - 17. Uncanny Plantations: The Repeating Gothic; Michael Kreyling. - 18. Slave Narratives and Slave Revolts; Maisha Wester. - 19. The Tragic Mulatto and Passing; Emily Clark. - 20. Law and the Gothic in the Slaveholding South; Ellen Weinauer. - 21. Charles Chesnutt' s Reparative Gothic; Christine A. Wooley. - 22. Jim Crow Gothic: Richard Wright' s Southern Nightmare; Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet. - 23. The Turn from the Gothic to Southern Liberalism in To Kill a Mockingbird; Michael L. Manson. - 24. Raising the Indigenous Undead; Eric Gary Anderson. - PART IV: GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN SOUTHERN GOTHIC TEXTS. - 25. Twisted Sisters: The Monstrous Women of Southern Gothic; Kellie Donovan-Condron. - 26. Ellen Glasgow' s Gothic Heroes and Monsters; Mark Graves. - 27. The Gothic and the Grotesque in the Novels of Carson McCullers; Dara Downey. - 28. ' The room must evoke some ghosts' : Tennessee Williams; Stephen Matterson. - 29. Truman Capote s Gothic Politics; Michael P. Bibler. - PART V: MONSTERS, VAMPIRES AND VOODOO. - 30. Southern Vampires: Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris and True Blood; Ken Gelder. - 31. Voodoo and Conjure as Gothic Realism; Anne Schroder. - 32. ' Nothing So Mundane as Ghosts' : Eudora Welty and the Gothic; Sarah Ford. - 33. Talismans of Shadows and Mantles of Light: Contemporary Forms of the Southern Female Gothic; Peggy Dunn Bailey. - 34. Shadows on the Small Screen: The Televisuality and Generic Hybridity of Southern Gothic; Brigid Cherry. - 35. The Southern Gothic in Film: An Overview; David Greven. - Index. -