Transcript The Dark Side of Individualism

The Dark Side of Individualism
Unit 3 Part2
Gothic tradition: 18-20th century
What is Gothic?
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Related to darkness, gloom, and mystery
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Inspired by gothic architecture of the
middle ages
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Draws out the dark side of humanism
Gothic Architecture
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Created in the middle ages.
The style was thought to instill a fear of
God in the people
The gargoyles were placed on cathedrals
to ward of evil demons
Pointed arches, flying butresses, high
stained glass windows, gargoyles
Middle ages: cathedrals a 19th c.
America: in many households
Literature
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Romanticism unleashed the imagination
a Gothic ideas
Looked at the potential evil within humans
Darkness and the supernatural
Setting: dark medieval castles, ect.
Examples of gothic literary characters:
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Dracula, Frankenstien, supernatural beings,
demons
Edgar Allen Poe: Master of
American Gothic Literature
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Believed people only revealed their true
natures in extreme situations such as live
burials, torture, and retribution from
beyond the grave
Dark, creepy setting
Many of Poe’s main characters (speaker)
are insane and the female characters tend
to be beautiful and dead (The Raven)
Gothic Literature fades in America
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CIVIL WAR
Real horrors = a desire to read horror
wanes when the people are faced with the
actual horrors of war
Realism becomes the preferred literary
style
Gothic Revival 20th Century
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Begins again in the American South
Gothic Revivalists: William Faulkner,
Carson McCullers, Truman Capote,
Flannery O’Connor.
Medieval decaying castle a delapitated
plantation
Ghostly figures a ghost of the past
hounding sinners to madness and death
Contemporary Gothic
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Vampires, monsters, mind games
Authors: Anne Rice, Stephen King
Thriving in today’s America
People are facinated my the dark side of
humanism
EMO
Art
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More passion in their paintings of nature
Lack of unity
More Chaotic
Thomas Cole 1801-1848
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Hudson River School