Research Resources

Spring Semester 2012

MWF 11:00-11:50, Grubbs Hall 312

Pittsburg State University

Dr. K. Nichols: knichols11@cox.net

Gothic

• The Gothic Experience and Gothic Fiction--definition and short history of the term "gothic."
• An Introduction to the Gothic Tradition --a more detailed definition of "gothic," with illustrations.
• Female Gothic: Then and Now --scholarly overview of various approaches.
• Horror --good definition of "horror"--scroll down to p. 106; mostly modern examples.
• Southern Gothic --short definition.

Louisa May Alcott

• 'Like a Wild Creature in its Cage, Paced that Handsome Woman': The Struggle between Sentiment and Sensation in the Writings of Louisa May Alcott --scholarly essay.

Charles Brockden Brown

• Charles Brockden Brown --biography.
• Charles Brockden Brown --another helpful biography.
• Discussion Questions/Talking Points on Brown's Wieland --questions raising some challenging issues.
• Misreading in Wieland: Some Unresolved Issues --good student essay.
• Wieland, Charles Brockden Brown --short introduction to various interpretations of the novel.
• The Fantastic/Uncanny Horror Thriller --Chapter Four from the scholarly study The Delights of Terror; includes a good section on Wieland.
• Female Captivity and the Deployment of Race in Three Early American Texts --scholarly article; includes a discussion of Wieland.
• From Demon Possession to Magic Show: Ventriloquism, Religion, and the Enlightenment--scholarly article on some key 18th century ideas that influenced Charles Brocken Brown.
• Textual Surveillance, Social Codes, and Sublime Voices: The Tyranny of Narrative in Caleb William and Wieland --scholarly article; last half is about Wieland.
• “Though Hermes never taught thee”: The Anti-Patriarchal Tendency of Charles Brockden Brown’s Mercurial Outcast Carwin, the Biloquist --scholarly article.

Emily Dickinson

• Gothic Undercurrents: Emily Dickinson --short biography.
• Emily Dickinson--Death --helpful student aid for interpreting "I heard a Fly buzz."
• Emily Dickinson: The Inner World --helpful student aid for interpreting "It was not Death, for I stood up."
• Emily Dickinson--Inner World --helpful student aid for interpreting "I felt a Funeral in my Brain."
• Finding Herself Alone: Emily Dickinson, Victorian Women Novelists, and the Female Subject --scholarly article.

William Faulkner

• The Telltale Hair: A Critical Study of William Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'--scholarly study.
• 'That Evening Sun' Commentary --helpful study aid.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper' --Gilman's explanation of the origins of her story.
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper': A Poetics of the Inside --scholarly essay.
• Beside Myself: The Abject in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' --scholarly article.
• Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic Closets in "The Yellow Wallpaper" --scholarly article.

Nathanial Hawthorne

• An Interpretive 'Crux' in 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux' --helpful student aid; to laugh or not to laugh?
• Survey of Criticism of 'Rappaccini's Daughter' --summary of different scholarly interpretations.

Zora Neale Hurston

• Zora Neale Hurston --links to many study aids and scholarly articles on Hurston.
• Waste and Whiteness: Zora Neale Hurston and the Politics of Eugenics --scholarly article; includes some comments on Hurston's story "Sweat."

Shirley Jackson

• Shirley Jackson--helpful biographical overview.
• Haunting Anniversary: A Half-Century of Hill House --scholarly article.
• First sentences: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson --shorter commentary, excellent close reading of Jackson's "first sentence."
• Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House: An Introduction --excellent introduction to a different edition of Jackson's novel.
• Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House --good general introduction to Jackson's novel and her life.
• The Haunting (1999) --movie review of the latest film based on Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

NOTE: More articles on Jackson's Haunting of Hill House can be found by going to the Axe Library link and consulting the online database MLA Bibliography.

Henry James

• Chapter Three: Apparitionists vs. Non-apparitionists: 1934-1948 --detailed scholarly discussion of the "ghosts/no ghosts" interpretations of The Turn of the Screw.
• Chapter Six: Culminations: 1970-1979 --detailed scholarly discussion of more recent interpretations of The Turn of the Screw.
• The Master's Trap: James's The Turn of the Screw--Chapter Nine from the scholarly study The Delights of Terror.
• The Old Dark House: The Architecture of Ambiguity in The Turn of the Screw and The Innocents--scholarly article.
• 'What's your title?' - 'The Turn of the Screw' --scholarly article.
• The Remembered Future: Neuro-Cognitive Identity in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw --scholarly article.

Herman Melville

• Herman Melville --links to many scholarly articles on "Benito Cereno."
• 'That First Comprehensive Glance': The Cinematic Suspense of Benito Cereno --scholarly paper by graduate student.

Toni Morrison

• Beyond silence and realism: Trauma and the Function of ghosts in Absalom, Absalom! and Beloved --scholarly article.
• Black Feminism and the Canon: Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Morrison's Beloved as Gothic Romance --scholarly article.
• Toni Morrison --links to many scholarly articles on Beloved.
• "The soul has bandaged moments": Reading the African American Gothic in Wright's "Big Boy Leaves Home," Morrison's Beloved, and Gomez's Gilda --scholarly article.

Movies

• Popular Culture and the Ecological Gothic: Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns --scholarly article.
  
  
• Frankenstein (1931): Movie Review.
  
  
• Alien: Movie Review.
• Gothic Tradition in Alien and Blade Runner --excerpt from the Fred Botting study.
• Feminism: An Alien Ideology --scholarly article.
  
  
• Black Cat: Movie Review.

Joyce Carol Oates

• Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly --Oates' story revising James' Turn of the Screw.
• Postgothic Fiction: Joyce Carol Oates Turns the Screw on Henry James --scholarly article.

Flannery O'Connor

• A Good Writer is Hard to Find --helpful biography, with emphasis on her religious beliefs.
• The Dark Side of the Cross: Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction--introduction to O'Connor's themes and style.
• Flannery O'Connor --links to many scholarly articles on her fiction.
• Stomaching the Truth: Getting to the Roots of Nausea in the Work of Jean Paul Sartre and Flannery O'Connor --scholarly article.
• Carnival in the "Temple": Flannery O'Connor's Dialogic Parable of Artistic Vocation --scholarly article.
• The Body, the Critics, and "The Artificial Nigger" --scholarly article.
• Placing Violence, Embodying Grace: Flannery O'Connor's "Displaced Person." --scholarly article.
• "One of my babies": The Misfit and the Grandmother --scholarly article.
• The Function of Signature in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." --scholarly article.
• The saving rape: Flannery O'Connor and patriarchal religion --scholarly article.

Sylvia Plath

• Lady Lazarus: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Sylvia Plath --helpful review of the inter-relationship of Plath's life and her poetry.
• Sylvia Plath --excerpts from scholarly articles on Plath's poetry.
• The Monster in Plath's 'Mirror' --scholarly article.
• On Sylvia Plath --discussion by Ted Hughes, Plath's ex-husband. Includes her poetry.
• Sylvia Plath Forum: The Moon and the Yew Tree --interesting on-going discussion/analysis of Plath's poem by forum members.
• Sylvia Plath Forum --links to interesting forum discussions/analyses of several different Plath poems.
• Sylvia Plath and the Gothic --thesis; see in particular Chapters II and III.
• Sylvia Plath Resources --links to many scholarly articles.
• Trapped in Language: Aspects of Ambiguity and Intertextuality in Selected Poetry and Prose by Sylvia Plath --scholarly article.

Edgar Allen Poe

• 'Sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature': The Brother-Sister Bond in Poe's 'Fall of the House of Usher' --scholarly article.
• Anticlosure: Poe's 'Ligeia' --Chapter Seven from the scholarly study The Delights of Terror.
• Poe's 'Ligeia' and the Pleasures of Terror --scholarly article.
• The Entrapped Critic: Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' --Chapter Eight from the scholarly study The Delights of Terror.
• Poe's 'The Black Cat' as Psychobiography: Some Reflections on the Narratological Dynamics --scholarly article.
• Dead or Alive: The Booby-trapped Narrator of Poe's 'Masque of the Red Death' --scholarly article.
• "To make Venus vanish": Misogyny as Motive in Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" --scholarly article.
• Domestic Terror and Poe's Arabesque Interior --scholarly article.
• Motive and Meaning: The Mystery of the Will in Poe's "The Black Cat" --scholarly article.
• 19th century AD --scholarly article on "Ligeia."
• The Common Property of the Mob: Democracy and Identity in Poe's "William Wilson." --scholarly article

Richard Wright

• The Horror of Bigger Thomas: The Perception of Form without Face in Richard Wright's 'Native Son' --scholarly articles.
• Invented by Horror: The Gothic and African American Literary Ideology in Native Son --scholarly article.
• Richard Wright --links to many scholarly articles on Native Son.

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