After a general historical outline of the term and concept 'grotesque' attention is focused on the grotesque in Southern fiction and an attempt is made to explain the abundance of this mode in the literature of the South. It can seemingly be linked to the distinctiveness of that region as compared to the rest of the United States—a distinctiveness that has been brought about by historical, geographical, sociological and economic factors.Basing the discussion on the theory of Philip Thomson, who defines the grotesque as "the unresolved clash between incompatibles in work and response," various critical approaches to the Southern grotesque are examined, all of which are found to be too all-embracing. An effort is then made to analyse the grotesque as displayed particularly in Caldwell, Capote, Faulkner, Goyen, McCullers, O'Connor and Welty. The study deals first with the macabre-grotesque, then the repulsive/frighten-ing-grotesque and finally the comic-grotesque. The last chapter is devoted to more recent authors writing in the 1960s. Their works reveal that the South is still a breeding ground for the grotesque. / digitalisering@umu

Thesis (M.A.)--North Carolina State University, 2002. / Title from PDF title page (viewed Apr. 2, 2005). Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-88).

This thesis has examined some women writers of the 1950s in an attempt to discover if there could be a "women" school of writers as definable as the Black, Jewish or Southern schools which gained recognition during that ten-year period. During the 1950s American literature became fragmented as various minorities began to search into personal histories in order to discover human identities within the framework of race, religion or geography. It was the contention of this paper that women were involved in much the same type of identity search, that through their own literature they were searching out a human identity' within, but not confined to, their sexual role in society.The cliche of the decade is that this was a placid time in feminist history, a time when women docilely sacrificed education and personal talents to return to the in a search for their homes as wives and mothers. However, a study of the works of Sylvia Plath, Carson McCullers, May Sarton and Elizabeth Janeway shows a group of women in active rebellion against the sexual stereotyping so prevalent in the 1950s. Through art these women were rejecting traditional concepts of a "woman's place," and instead were exploring their own talents, strengths and potentials human identity.This thesis has sought to combine a study of the cultural influences operating on society of the 1950s with the literature being written by women during this period in order to more fully understand the female attitude toward herself and her role. This study indicates that the active rebellion of the women's liberation movement a decade later arose from the search for identity found in much literature by women of the 1950s.

Carson McCullers's neglected short stories "Sucker", "Like That", and "The Haunted Boy" depict stark adolescent crises. Her character analyses dramatize important elements of many theories of adolescent psychology. Each of these stories depicts what happens when something goes horribly wrong in the course of an already difficult stage of life. In "Sucker" two different stages of adolescent development collide. Pete and Sucker go through different psychological adjustments. The two boys discover the difficulties of adolescent romance, hero-worship, peer group formation and exclusion, and power reversal. The narrator in "Like That" struggles with her Peter-Pan complex as she witnesses her sister go through an adolescent romance. She despises - and fears - the changes that adolescence and adulthood bring to her life and her family. "The Haunted Boy" explores the struggles of Hugh as he deals with issues of adult imitation, lack of a strong male role model, peer loyalty, and emotional repression.

This dissertation argues that the four writers named above use the grotesque to illustrate the increasingly peculiar consequences of the assault of modernity on traditional Southern culture. The basic conflict between the views of Bakhtin and Kayser provides the foundation for defining the grotesque herein, and Geoffrey Harpham's concept of "margins" helps to define interior and exterior areas for the discussion. Chapter 1 lays a foundation for why the South is different from other regions of America, emphasizing the influences of Anglo-Saxon culture and traditions brought to these shores by the English gentlemen who settled the earliest tidewater colonies as well as the later influx of Scots-Irish immigrants (the Celtic-Southern thesis) who settled the Piedmont and mountain regions. This chapter also notes that part of the South's peculiarity derives from the cultural conflicts inherent between these two groups. Chapters 2 through 5 analyze selected short fiction from each of these respective authors and offer readings that explain how the grotesque relates to the drastic social changes taking place over the half-century represented by these authors. Chapter 6 offers an evaluation of how and why such traditions might be preserved. The overall argument suggests that traditional Southern culture grows out of four foundations, i. e., devotion to one's community, devotion to one's family, devotion to God, and love of place. As increasing modernization and homogenization impact the South, these cultural foundations have been systematically replaced by unsatisfactory or confusing substitutes, thereby generating something arguably grotesque. Through this exchange, the grotesque has moved from the observably physical, as shown in the earlier works discussed, to something internalized that is ultimately depicted through a kind of intellectual if not physical stasis, as shown through the later works.

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La homosexualidad masculina, durante la primera guerra fría, se articuló en la literatura norteamericana en torno a dos ejes: las asunciones heroicas de masculinidad (subordinadoras de masculinidades alternativas) y la frontera como sitio y mito.La masculinidad heroica, otrora hegemónica, y la homosexualidad de los personajes de ficción analizados se presentan unidas en una época donde el discurso médico, jurídico, publicitario y político quiso divorciarlas. Esa unión se produjo en uno de los sitios más masculinistas de la tradición norteamericana: la frontera, fuera real, simbólica o imaginaria. Estos personajes no consiguen alejarse de las posiciones patriarcales que los oprimen como homosexuales. Por tanto, esa masculinidad que tanto ansían abrazar queda lejos de ser garante de pleno desarrollo individual, excepto en la frontera categórica con la realidad. Estas ficciones, escritas en el umbral de la posmodernidad, suponen una apelación a los procesos desintegradores y liberalizadores de la misma. / Homosexuality was articulated around two ideas during the first part of the Cold War: heroic assumptions of masculinity -subordinators of alternative masculinities- and the frontier as place and myth. The heroic masculinity -long ago hegemonic- and the homosexuality of the fictional characters analysed go hand in hand in a time when medical, legal, political and mass-media discourses meant to separate them. We can see that union in one of the most man-dominated places in American tradition: the frontier, be it real, symbolic or imaginary. These characters cannot get away from the patriarchal positions which oppress them as homosexuals. Therefore, that masculinity they long to hold onto does not guarantee their integrity as human beings, except in the categorical frontier with reality itself. For these fictions, written at the threshold of postmodernity, appeal to its disintegrating and liberating processes.

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