Southern Gothic literature has its roots in works by Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ambrose Bierce, among others.  It is characterized by a concern with the legacies of the Antebellum South, including social and racial tensions, violence, cultural mores and values, isolation, class and cast, obsession with the past, and ‘haunted’ landscapes. This world is brilliantly conjured in Faulkner’s The Unvanquished, a highly readable novel structured as a series of stories and set during and after the Civil War in his fictionalized Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi; Williams’ play ‘A Streetcar Names Desire,’ set in New Orleans in an apartment on a street aptly names Elysian Fields, sometime in the mid-1940’s; and McCullers’ novella, ‘The Ballad of the Sad Cafe,’ and short story, ‘A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.’ -both set in a small isolated Georgia town in the mid-20th-century. Because class participation is highly encouraged, you can expect lively and stimulating discussions as well as guided analysis of the texts.  The following books are available via the registation form:
‘The Unvanquished’ by William Faulkner ($14)
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams ($11)
‘The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories’ by Carson McCullers ($16)