Wieland

• Bellefleur (1980), A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982), Mysteries of Winterthurn (1984), My Heart Laid Bare (1998), and The Accursed (2013) by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates has been described as a neo-Gothic writer. The books listed above comprise her “Gothic series”. She acknowledges Charles Brockden Brown as one of the earliest influencers of the Gothic genre along with Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. In an essay on “The Aesthetics of Fear,” (1998) she describes horror literature as having a cathartic function in that it evokes “an artful simulation” of emotion that is “crude, inchoate, nerve-driven and ungovernable.” Such fiction helps readers to exercise their capacity to regulate emotion that might otherwise be overpowering when encountered in real life.

• Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare is probably one of the greatest and widest-ranging influences on English literature. Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear contain many of the elements that define the Gothic genre, including ghosts, witches, storms, and gloomy old castles. Wieland subtly references The Tempest in chapter 6, which features a storm accompanying the arrival of Carwin as the Caliban-esque figure. Other Shakespearean tricksters include Ariel, also from The Tempest, Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and, arguably, Falstaff who, as a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, appeared in four of Shakespeare’s plays.

• “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe

Poe relied heavily on Gothic conventions in most of his work, including “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Telltale Heart.” But “Usher” is his most quintessentially Gothic story. Poe eschewed the supernatural in his stories, focusing on psychological horror much as Brown does.

• Northhanger Abbey (1817) by Jane Austen

Although this is Austen’s first completed novel (1803), it was published posthumously. Here, Austin fondly satirizes the Gothic genre. Her young heroine, Catherine Moreland, is perhaps somewhat overly fond of Gothic novels and imagines herself as a romantic heroine.

• Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe

Considred to be the archetypal European Gothic, this is the favorite novel of Catherine Moreland, the heroine of Northanger Abbey.

• Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Shelley

Brown was influenced philosophically and artistically by Mary Shelley’s parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and Shelley was in turn influenced by Brown. She claimed to have reread Brown’s novels while writing Frankenstein.