The Gothic and the Carnivalesque in American Culture , livre ebook

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125 pages

English

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The Gothic and the Carnivalesque in American Culture offers a new account of the American Gothic. Gothic studies, the field that explores horrid and frightful narratives, usually describes the genre as exploring genuine historical fears, crises and traumas, yet this does not account for the ways in which the genre is often a source of wicked delight as much as it is of horror – its audiences laugh as often as they shriek. This book traces the carnivalesque tradition in the American Gothic from the nineteenth into the late twentieth century. It discusses the festivals offered by Poe, Hawthorne and Irving; the celebrations of wickedness offered by the Weird Tales writers, including H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith; the curious aura attached to Ray Bradbury’s stories; the way in which hosted horrors in comics and on television in the 1950s and 1960s taught their mass audiences how to read the genre; Stephen King’s nurturing of a new audience for Gothic carnivals in the 1970s and 1980s; and the confluence of Gothic story and Goth subculture in the 1990s.

Contents
Introduction: Ballyhoo
Chapter One: Theory, Practice and Gothic Carnival
Chapter Two: ‘The Delight of its Horror’ – Poe’s Carnivals and the Nineteenth-Century American Gothic
Chapter Three: Weird Tales and Pulp Subjunctivity
Chapter Four: Ray Bradbury and the October Aura
Chapter Five: Hosted Horrors of the 1950s and 1960s
Chapter Six: Stephen King, Affect and the Real Limits of Gothic Practice
Chapter Seven: Every Day is Halloween – Goth and the Gothic
Conclusion: Waiting for the Great Pumpkin

Sujets

Literary Criticism

American

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Publié par	University of Wales Press
Date de parution	15 mai 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783162314
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,2174€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE GOTHIC AND THE CARNIVALESQUE IN AMERICAN CULTURE

SERIES PREFACE
Gothic Literary Studies is dedicated to publishing groundbreaking scholarship on Gothic in literature and film. The Gothic, which has been subjected to a variety of critical and theoretical approaches, is a form which plays an important role in our understanding of literary, intellectual and cultural histories. The series seeks to promote challenging and innovative approaches to Gothic which question any aspect of the Gothic tradition or perceived critical orthodoxy. Volumes in the series explore how issues such as gender, religion, nation and sexuality have shaped our view of the Gothic tradition. Both academically rigorous and informed by the latest developments in critical theory, the series provides an important focus for scholarly developments in Gothic studies, literary studies, cultural studies and critical theory. The series will be of interest to students of all levels and to scholars and teachers of the Gothic and literary and cultural histories.
SERIES EDITORS
Andrew Smith, University of Sheffield Benjamin F. Fisher, University of Mississippi
EDITORIAL BOARD
Kent Ljungquist, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts
Richard Fusco, St Joseph’s University, Philadelphia
David Punter, University of Bristol
Chris Baldick, University of London
Angela Wright, University of Sheffield
Jerrold E. Hogle, University of Arizona
The Gothic and the Carnivalesque in American Culture
Timothy Jones

© Timothy Jones, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN          978-1-78316-192-8 e-ISBN       978-1-78316-231-4
The right of Timothy Jones to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover image: J. Allen St John, magazine cover artwork for Lloyd Arthur Eshbach's Isle of the Undead, serialised in Weird Tales (1936).
for Jane
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Ballyhoo
1    Theory, Practice and Gothic Carnival
2    ‘The Delight of its Horror’ – Edgar Allan Poe’s Carnivals and the Nineteenth-Century American Gothic
3    Weird Tales and Pulp Subjunctivity
4    Ray Bradbury and the October Aura
5    ‘Hello, again, you little monsters!’ – Hosted Horrors of the 1950s and 1960s
6    Stephen King, Affect and the Real Limits of Gothic Practice
7    Every Day is Halloween – Goth and the Gothic
Conclusion: Waiting for the Great Pumpkin
Notes
Works Cited
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to Fred Botting, Charles Ferrall, Jerrold E. Hogle, Ingrid Horrocks, William Hughes, Anna Jackson, Thierry Jutel, John Muirhead, David Norton, Harry Ricketts, Andrew Smith, Catherine Spooner, Jane Stafford, Mark Williams and Peter Whiteford, all extraordinarily generous in their support of this research and the researcher.
Excerpts from Ray Bradbury’s works are reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc., as agents for Ray Bradbury Literary Works, LLC. Excerpts from Carrie copyright © 1974 Stephen King; The Shining copyright © 1977 Stephen King; Danse Macabre copyright © 1981 Stephen King; Skeleton Crew copyright © 1985 Stephen King; It copyright © 1986 Stephen King; On Writing copyright © 2000 Stephen King; reproduced by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Limited. Excerpts from Beloved by Toni Morrison copyright © 1987 by Toni Morrison. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Excerpts from Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat , published by Futura Books, a division of Macdonald and Co, used by permission of Random House LLC. Excerpts from Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat used also by permission of Little, Brown Book Group. Excerpts from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat reprinted by permission of the author.
Some of the ideas discussed in chapter 1 were first presented in Gothic Studies , 11/1 (2009).
Introduction: Ballyhoo

The label ‘American Gothic’ suggests a genre that describes the historical circumstance of the American nation; certainly, this has been a common theme in criticism since the 1980s, which has loaded the genre with various discursive potentials. The American Gothic often very obviously addresses crises and traumas produced by genuine historical forces; indeed, how can a text not be marked by the time and space from which it emerged? Yet this account of the genre has difficulty explaining why it should be that readers often use Gothic texts as a source of irresponsible and wicked pleasure rather than as an engagement with the serious stuff supposedly being described. Often, the Gothic text does not offer a compelling account of the American real, but nevertheless remains a distinct product of American culture. These texts are the product of a historical moment but appear to turn their back on that moment, instead offering readers something else .
What is this something? Consider Charles G. Finney’s 1935 novella, The Circus of Dr. Lao . An extraordinary circus rolls into Abalone, Arizona, and demands the attention of the townsfolk. The conceit of the book is that the circus is filled with true wonders – a sea serpent, the magician Apollonius of Tyana, a hound made of vegetation, a ‘Sonoran medusa from Northern Mexico’, and so forth; the attractions all have ‘a taint of evil or hysteria about them’. 1 Yet the folk of Abalone, mired in Depression-era troubles, have difficulty recognising the authenticity of the miraculous carnival. Larry Kamper sees the parade on Main Street but refuses to believe the unicorn is anything other than a fake; confronted with a mythical roc, Edna Rogers complains she had actually been hoping to see elephants holding each other’s tails. 2 Their everyday lives are too raw, too banal to admit the proffered eccentricities.
The narrative builds towards a performance under the big top, a show that works itself up to a cruel, ritualistic, sexual frenzy; the circus’s acts are basically Gothic – salacious, satanic and appalling. A black mass is staged as an entertainment, witches fly through the air, the Devil himself is made to manifest, a naked witch is whipped, then all is dismissed so the next act can be rolled in. The limits of the big top disappear as a statue of the great god Yottle appears, together with thousands of worshippers. Virgin sacrifice is demanded and three people are crushed to death. The performance threatens to spiral out of control; the medusa accidentally petrifies a handful of spectators. Yet the audience cry out ‘Louder and funnier!’ 3 Uptight audience member Agnes Birdsong complains that the circus is a symbol of evil; Mr Etaoin consoles her: ‘It’s only a circus’, he says. ‘Don’t let it disturb you.’ 4 Both the staging and the audience’s reactions are comic, but not quite absurd. The text presents a largely nonsensical but recognisably Gothic performance. Marvels, violence, weird rites and forbidden sexuality are presented, but the audience want more volume and better jokes. Concerns about fakery are aired; prim moral complaint follows. The action is presented as potentially out of control, but it is safe for the majority of the spectators. Whatever terrible thing is happening on the stage, Mr Etaoin is right – circuses ought not to disturb.
The way the carnival is presented suggests Gothic experience in a wider sense. As anyone who has watched a horror film in a full cinema knows, when frightful action is presented, sometimes the audience appears to be scared – gasping, shrieking, quietly tense -but just as often, there is laughter, incredulity and even derision expressed. This is not breaking faith with the spirit of the performance or film: it is instead characteristic of how we engage with horror narrative. The screams should be louder, the ghastly should be funnier, it ought to bother the likes of an Agnes Birdsong more than it already does, and it needs to continue to entertain the body of the audience.
As Apollonius prepares to summon witches and demons, ‘a pall of darkness came into the tent, opaque and not to be seen through; and it crept into every angle and corner of the tent, so that one could not tell beside whom one sat.’ 5 This too is an important method of the Gothic carnival. The show’s viewers are offered anonymity. They need not be held accountable for their responses; for the period of the darkness they are excused the responsibilities of their identity and their place in the community, of the pressures of the sensible and the seemly. Yet ultimately, the folk of Abalone are utterly unchanged by the spectacle, and if they are genuinely moved, the text does not say. The show is over and ‘into the dust and sunshine the people of Abalone went homewards or wherever else they were going.’ 6 It is not that the circus has been less than disturbing or thrilling: it is that the real is so powerful that it cannot be repudiated or avoided, except for the small period of time watching the show. The townsfolk are like Mrs Cassan, who has had her fortune read by Apollonius; he tells her ‘Tomorrow will be like today . . . I see your remaining days as quiet, tedious collections of hours. You will not travel anywhere. You will think no new thoughts. You will experience no new passions.’ 7