Southern Gothic Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Margie Burns

Critical Essay by Margie Burns

SOURCE: Burns, Margie. “A Good Rose Is Hard to Find: Southern Gothic as Signs of Social Dislocation in Faulkner and O'Connor.” In Image and Ideology in Modern/Postmodern Discourse, edited by David B. Browning and Susan Bazargan, pp. 105-23. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Burns contends that Southern Gothic is a literary technique that both represents and hides the dehumanization of the South into perceived stereotypes. The critic analyzes works by Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner as examples of this technique.

Between the simple backward look and the simple progressive thrust there is room for long argument but none for enlightenment.

—Raymond Williams, The Country and the City

The topic of images of the South in the literature and media of the nation as a whole is rich in possibilities for cultural studies, for analysis of the processes of production, reception, and consumption...
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