Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chronology of Publications and Events
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Genres
- 1 Bodies in Early US-Atlantic Theater
- 2 Sentimentalism and the Feeling Body
- 3 Slavery, Disability, and the Black Body/White Body Complex in the American Slave Narrative
- 4 Monstrous Bodies of the American Gothic
- 5 Bodies at War
- 6 Decolonizing the Body in Multiethnic American Fiction
- 7 Science Fiction’s Humanoid Bodies of the Future
- 8 Contemporary North American Transgender Literature
- Part II Critical Methodologies
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
4 - Monstrous Bodies of the American Gothic
from Part I - Genres
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2022
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Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chronology of Publications and Events
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Genres
- 1 Bodies in Early US-Atlantic Theater
- 2 Sentimentalism and the Feeling Body
- 3 Slavery, Disability, and the Black Body/White Body Complex in the American Slave Narrative
- 4 Monstrous Bodies of the American Gothic
- 5 Bodies at War
- 6 Decolonizing the Body in Multiethnic American Fiction
- 7 Science Fiction’s Humanoid Bodies of the Future
- 8 Contemporary North American Transgender Literature
- Part II Critical Methodologies
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
Disordered bodies preoccupied early British gothic novels: bodies unable to control their appetites or their fear; bodies in pain; bodies undone by emotions, violence and invasive institutions. Similarly, in the United States the first gothic author, Charles Brockden Brown, wrote fitfully plotted novels full of strange and unruly bodies, such as the odd-looking victim-villain Carwin in Wieland (1798), the diabolical ‘Indian’ in Edgar Huntley (1799), and the pestilent bodies gripped by yellow fever in Arthur Mervyn (1799).
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022