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Chapter XI - American Tales of Terror
The vogue of Gothic story in America; the novels of Charles Brockden
Brown; his use of the "explained" supernatural; his Godwinian
theory; his construction and style; Washington Irving's genial tales
of terror; Hawthorne's reticence and melancholy; suggestions for
eery stories in his notebooks; Twice- Told Tales ; Mosses from an
Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter ; Hawthorne's sympathetic insight into
character; The House of the Seven Gables , and the ancestral curse;
his half- credulous treatment of the supernatural; unfinished
stories; a contrast of Hawthorne's methods with those of Edgar Allan
Poe; A Manuscript found in a Bottle , the first of Poe's tales of
terror; the skill of Poe illustrated in Ligeia, The Fall of the
House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death , and The Cash of
Amontillado ; Poe's psychology; his technique in The Pit and the
Pendulum and in his detective stories; his influence; the art of
Poe; his ideal in writing a short story.
In 1797 we are told that in America "the dairymaid and hired man no
longer weep over the ballad of the cruel stepmother, but amuse
themselves into an agreeable terror with the haunted houses and
hobgoblins of Mrs. Radcliffe." In The Asylum, or
Alonzo and
Melissa, published in Ploughkeepsie in 1811, the Gothic castle,
with its full equipment of "explained ghosts," has been safely
conveyed across the Atlantic and set up in South Carolina; and
The
Sicilian Pirate or the Pillar of Mystery: a Terrific Romance, is,
if we may trust its title, a hair-raising story, in the style of
"Monk"
Lewis.
Charles Brockden Brown, one of the earliest American
novelists, prides himself on "calling forth the passions and
engaging the sympathy of the reader by means not hitherto employed
by preceding authors," and speaks slightingly of "puerile
superstitions and exploded manners, Gothic castles and
chimeras."
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