Chapter 11

The vogue of Gothic story in America; the novels of Charles Brockden Brown; his use of the "explained" supernatural; his Godwinian theory; his construction and style; Washington Irving's genial tales of terror; Hawthorne's reticence and melancholy; suggestions for eery stories in his notebooks; _Twice-Told Tales_; _Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter_; Hawthorne's sympathetic insight into character; _The House of the Seven Gables_, and the ancestral curse; his half-credulous treatment of the supernatural; unfinished stories; a contrast of Hawthorne's methods with those of Edgar Allan Poe; _A Manuscript found in a Bottle_, the first of Poe's tales of terror; the skill of Poe illustrated in _Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death_, and _The Cash of Amontillado_; Poe's psychology; his technique in _The Pit and the Pendulum_ and in his detective stories; his influence; the art of Poe; his ideal in writing a short story. Pp. 197-220.