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Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick: What is Southern Gothic? 13924 Views


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Description:

Ready for a horror story that isn’t about a bad hair day? Pick up a Southern Gothic novel like Moby-Dick or As I Lay Dying instead. Though now that we think about it, Ishmael spent all his time at sea. Ain’t no Pantene on the high seas.


Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in Southern gothic What is southern

00:08

gothic Ah la shmoop Well thanks for joining us This

00:13

is southern gothic allah shmoop and we're joined by aaron

00:17

neighbor who has a degree in literature and works as

00:19

a freelance writer and musician He's joining us today to

00:22

discuss southern gothic kafka's The metamorphosis yellow and melville's moby

00:29

dick So aaron why don't we start out with a

00:33

couple of broad questions about southern gothic First of all

00:36

what is it What is southern gothic southern gothic Are

00:41

spooky stories set in the south about strange weird characters

00:46

who don't fit into the world that they're sort of

00:48

born into Another feature of southern gothic is that characters

00:53

will often have freakish malady about them making some kind

00:58

of culturally relevant statement about the world that they live

01:02

in What is southern gothic look like So if we

01:08

want to think of specific southern gothic pieces you could

01:12

think as i lay dying by william faulkner one of

01:16

the main features of as i lay dying is that

01:19

faulkner incorporated at least fifteen different narrators all telling the

01:24

story from their own points of view that is set

01:27

in a rural county and mississippi So in the south

01:31

summit andi characters are impoverished They're concerned about death and

01:39

mortality So one of these sons and as i lay

01:42

dying has starts The novel with a broken leg re

01:46

breaks his leg has it set in cement and then

01:49

it is permanently damaged because they just ruining this leg

01:53

beyond all repair s o something Gothic uses a lot

01:56

of these kinds of characters to set up as an

02:00

out siders So we get an outsider's perspective on a

02:02

world that they don't necessarily understand What is southern gothic 00:02:10.458 --> [endTime] What is southern gothic look like

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