A Study Of Southern Gothicism In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird

As a subgenre of American Gothic,Southern Gothic burgeoned and then flourished during the Southern Renaissance and thereafter.Harper Lee,a female writer from the Deep South,created her masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird in the vein of Southern Gothicism,thereby delving into the decadence of American southern civilization and exposing the pervasive evils in southern history and the unfathomable darkness in human nature.This thesis attempts at a research on To Kill a Mockingbird from the perspective of Southern Gothicism,focusing respectively on Southern Gothic grotesques,Southern Gothic settings,and Southern Gothic plots,with a view to showcasing Harper Lee's brilliant success in fulfiling the thematic purposes of her masterpiece,namely,disclosing the evils of history and mankind.It is hoped that the study could possibly propose a new perspective to the interpretation and appreciation of To Kill a Mockingbird,and could provoke more academic attention to the relevance of Harper Lee's fictional reality to the social reality of the contemporary times.