The Research Of The Psychological Gothic Tradition In American Romantic Novels

American Romanticism was a prosperous period in the history of American literature,which began at the end of the 18 th century and ended with the outbreak of the Civil War.After American Revolution,the United States,bearing no heavy burden of history,developed rapidly in politics and economy,which,at the same time,required independent national literature to express the unique social reality of the country and the psychological characteristics of the people.The Gothic tradition was introduced into the United States from Europe at the end of the 18 th century and experienced a process of localization.Under the influence of democratic system,the development of urbanization and the changes of family structure,the Gothic tradition has become a sharp weapon for writers to analyze American social problems and psychological fears.Starting with the democratic system,the urbanization and the family life during American Romanticism,the paper expounds the source of fear and the artistic characteristics of the psychological Gothic tradition written by Brown,Allan Poe and Hawthorne.Combined with the classical texts,the paper illustrates the ways by which American social problems and people's psychological crisis are demonstrated so as to achieve the purpose of criticizing the current situations and defending justice.The first chapter is about the development of the Gothic novels and the Gothic tradition.In the second half of the 18 th century,the English writer Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto.The name of Gothic novels came from the subtitle--A Gothic Story Walpole added a to the novel in the second edition.Gothic novels became popular in Europe afterwards and were introduced to the United States in the late 18 th century.Although Gothic novels began to die out in the 1820 s,the Gothic tradition in the novels has been spread until today.American writers integrate the native characteristics into the Gothic tradition,focusing on the depiction of the innerworld of human beings.The psychological Gothic tradition,as a way of creating and exploring human nature and a powerful means of criticizing the society,continues to develop through all stages of American novels,demonstrating its infinite energy and vitality.In the second chapter,American writer Charles Brookden Brown and his Gothic tradition are discussed.His Gothic tradition has unique American themes and social backgrounds,which sets the tone for the creation of American Gothic tradition.Brown paid close attention to the democratic system of the young country and had a keen insight into the shortcomings of national identity,legal justice and women's rights caused by the imperfection of the political system after the founding of the United States and the psychological panic caused by it.On the basis of the European Gothic tradition,Brown used Gothic tradition for the first time to describe people's psychological activities under various illusions,establishing the unique American psychological Gothic tradition.Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic creation is analyzed in the third chapter.Poe transplanted the medieval castles in Gothic novels to American cities,revealing people's spiritual crisis in the process of urbanization during the first half of the nineteenth century in the United States.The industrial revolution changed the traditional economic situations in America.With the development of urbanization,the traditional mode featuring small farms was replaced by large-scale mechanization.Moreover,the big cities in the east became overcrowded,leading to narrower living space,class conflicts and other social problems.Faced with the strong impact of the development of urbanization on people's life,Allan Poe portrayed the Gothic themes of darkness,decadence and death,showing a distorted and alienated psychological space to fulfill the salvation of the human souls.Nathaniel Hawthorne is another master of American romantic literature in the nineteenth century.Chapter four begins with Hawthorne's Gothic psychological Romance and explains his Gothic writing in New England.Hawthorne was particularly concerned about the family history and the sins committed by the ancestors,which became the psychological burdens on the futuregenerations.These provide excellent sources for the literary imagination of the Gothic tradition.Through dedicated and mysterious Gothic description Hawthorne captured the secret privacy and subtle relationships among family members.His psychological romance demonstrated a series of dark and sinful Gothic stories with obvious American history.Through the analysis of the three representative writers' Gothic tradition,we can get the common characteristics of Gothic tradition in the Romantic period: In terms of the contents,the Gothic tradition in American Romantic period bears profound social and cultural connotations.It is the manifestation of the democracy,economy and life in the literary works in this historical period of the United States.Gothic tradition connected the external reality with the internal psychology and became a powerful weapon for the writers to expose social malpractices,release psychological fears,and alert the numbed.From the perspective of narration,the writers used physical Gothic space to externalize psychological Gothic space.The desolate and decadent physical space is the externalization of people's inner fears and worries.