The Haunted House in Contemporary Filmic and Literary Gothic Narratives of Trauma
Haunted houses are still a central figure in contemporary American film and literature alike. Contemporary narratives of haunting are acutely aware that the haunted house is the psyche itself: the motif has become prevalent in postmodern narratives staging the “haunted self” of survivors of trauma....
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Association Française d'Etudes Américaines
2013-05-01
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| Series: | Transatlantica : Revue d'Études Américaines |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/5933 |
| Summary: | Haunted houses are still a central figure in contemporary American film and literature alike. Contemporary narratives of haunting are acutely aware that the haunted house is the psyche itself: the motif has become prevalent in postmodern narratives staging the “haunted self” of survivors of trauma. These Gothic texts or films often stage maze imagery that simultaneously captures the characters’ feelings of terror and alienation, and Gothic postmodern texts’ complexity, playing on their status as “haunted houses” of images and/or words, and, in an ultimate gothic twist, on the “ghosting” of the text itself. |
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| ISSN: | 1765-2766 |