Research Catalog

Catholicism and American borders in the Gothic literary imagination

Title
Catholicism and American borders in the Gothic literary imagination / Farrell O'Gorman.
Author
O'Gorman, Farrell
Publication
Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2017]

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Details

Description
xi, 326 pages; 24 cm
Summary
"In Catholicism and American Borders in the Gothic Literary Imagination, Farrell O'Gorman presents the first study of the recurrent role of Catholicism in a Gothic tradition that is essential to the literature of the United States. In this tradition, Catholicism is depicted as threatening to break down borders separating American citizens--or some representative American--from a larger world beyond. While earlier studies of Catholicism in the American literary imagination have tended to highlight the faith's historical association with Europe, O'Gorman stresses how that imagination often responds to a Catholicism associated with Latin America and the Caribbean. On a deeper level, O'Gorman demonstrates how the Gothic tradition he traces here builds on and ultimately transforms the persistent image in modern Anglophone literature of Catholicism as "a religion without a country; indeed, a religion inimical to nationhood." O'Gorman focuses on the work of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Herman Melville, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Cormac McCarthy, and selected contemporary writers including Toni Morrison. These authors, representing historical periods from the early republic to the present day, have distinct experiences of borders within and around their nation and hemisphere, itself an ever-emergent "America." As O'Gorman carefully documents, they also have distinct experiences of Catholicism and distinct ways of imagining the faith, often shaped at least in part within the Church itself. In their narratives, Catholicism plays a complicated and profound role that ultimately challenges longstanding notions of American exceptionalism and individual autonomy. This analysis contributes not only to discourse regarding Gothic literature and nationalism but also to a broader ongoing dialogue regarding religion, secularism, and American literature"--
Subjects
Genre/Form
  • Criticism, interpretation, etc.
  • History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-312) and index.
Contents
Introduction -- Crèvecœur's mask of the modern : Roman ruins and America's "new man" -- Melville's "monkish fables" : Catholic bodies haunting the new world -- Fear, desire, and communion in Chopin's old La Louisiane -- Waste lands, border histories, gothic frontiers : Faulkner, McCarthy, Percy -- O'Connor's "true country" : borders, crossings, pilgrims -- Coda : Catholicism, American borders, and the gothic in contemporary U.S. fiction.
Call Number
JFE 17-10432
ISBN
  • 9780268102173
  • 0268102171
LCCN
  • 2017024318
  • 40027569786
OCLC
982091561
Author
O'Gorman, Farrell, author.
Title
Catholicism and American borders in the Gothic literary imagination / Farrell O'Gorman.
Publisher
Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2017]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-312) and index.
Other Form:
Online version: O'Gorman, Farrell, author. Catholicism and American borders in the Gothic literary imagination Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2017 9780268102197 (DLC) 2017036803
Other Standard Identifier
40027569786
Research Call Number
JFE 17-10432
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