Black and White Horrors: American Gothic. A Review. (Lennhardt, Corinna. Savage Horrors. The Intrinsic Raciality of the American Gothic. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020. 286 p.)

Abstract

The monograph by Corinna Lenhardt (b. 1982) Savage Horrors: The Intrinsic Raciality of the American Gothic (2020) studies the problems of race, ethnicity, gender, genre and history of literature. The research is focused primarily on the American Gothic literature. Corinna Lenhardt argues that racialization is intrinsic and natural for all Gothic literature. The researcher also introduces the concept of gotheme and argues that literary Gothic is based on the unique binary opposition "savage villain / civil hero", proving this thesis on the material of the analyzed Gothic novels. The author highlights a long and destructive impact of Gothic racialization on cultural discourse in the United States, as well as Afro-American resistance to the status quo in the American Gothic literature. Corinna Lenhardt thoroughly studies early British Gothic novels, as well as WASP and African-American Gothic literature from the XVIII century to the present time.