American Gothicism in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland or Transformation and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s the House of the Seven Gables

Abstract EN

This paper looks into the ways two Nineteen century American Writers, Charles Brockden Brown and Nathanial Hawthorne tried to appropriate the European gothic traditions and come up with new elements of horror specific to the American experience.

The study surveys the characteristics of transatlantic gothic, and then, tries to demarcate American gothic traditions in terms of settings, characters, and style.

[For demonstration, the paper attempts to show how both Charles Brockden Brown in Wieland or Transformation and Nathaniel Hawthorne in The House of the Seven Gables tried to come up with gothic traditions peculiar to the American experience.

The study shows how the two novelists created a sense of horror, mystery, and uncertainty in a way that departs from the European gothic traditions.

The two American writers were keen on developing gothic traditions that fit within the specificity of the American experience and the nationalistic aspirations of maintain literary independence parallel to the political independence in the last quarter of the Eighteen Century.