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Dark Side Of The Dream: The Social Gothic In Vietnam Era America, Greg Smith

Dissertations

Gothic horror narratives have been a mainstay of American literature since Charles Brockden Brown's 1798 novel Wieland, and also of our cinema since the celebrated Universal films Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931. Often considered tripe by professional literary and film critics, such tales—both in written and cinematic form—began to gamer intellectual attention during the 1970s as their general popularity soared and as academic interest in American popular culture increased significantly. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Gothic genre became one of the most discussed and debated aspects of American pop culture, with numerous critics weighing in on its potential implications, …