Read The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance Page 7
CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.
The vogue of Gothic story in America; the novels of CharlesBrockden Brown; his use of the "explained" supernatural; hisGodwinian theory; his construction and style; Washington Irving'sgenial tales of terror; Hawthorne's reticence and melancholy;suggestions for eery stories in his notebooks; _Twice-ToldTales_; _Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter_;Hawthorne's sympathetic insight into character; _The House of theSeven Gables_, and the ancestral curse; his half-creduloustreatment of the supernatural; unfinished stories; a contrast ofHawthorne's methods with those of Edgar Allan Poe; _A Manuscriptfound in a Bottle_, the first of Poe's tales of terror; the skillof 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_ andin his detective stories; his influence; the art of Poe; hisideal in writing a short story. Pp. 197-220.
CHAPTER XII - CONCLUSION.
The persistence of the tale of terror; the position of the Gothicromance in the history of fiction; the terrors of actual life inthe Bronte's novels; sensational stories of Wilkie Collins, LeFanu and later authors; the element of terror in various types ofromance; experiments of living authors; the future of the tale ofterror. Pp221-228.