Autori americani

American authors

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

The Tell-Tale Heart, 1843. Obsession, paranoia, vulture eye, panopticon, cold-blooded murder, madness & rationality, anxiety, confession.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, 1890. Civil war & confederates vs unionists, romantic & unrealistic views of war, attempted sabotage, hanging, wooden plank, 20 negro law, clock ticking, “frightful roaring” “blinding white light” “sound of a cannon”, flashback & hallucination, 3 sections, near-death experience, neck breaking, mimicking birth when emerging out of water, Farquhar tricked by disguised union scout.

Kate Chopin (1851-1904)

Désirée’s Baby, 1893. Fairy tale, gothic horror, quadroon boys, racism & patriarchy, slavery, gateway, subjection, boundaries, horrific twist, bayou, plantation.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892. Social injustice, post-partum depression, Dr. Mitchell, resting cure, inertia, physical & psychological constriction, mental breakdown, twisted gothic romance, secret diary, obsession, mental hospital, remote house, hallucinations, woman-double trapped, madness, murder, suicide, crawling, ripped wallpaper, self-destruction, neurasthenia, anger towards the scientific community, sexual abuse, subordination, isolation, anxiety, paranoid behavior, denial.

Susan Glaspell (1876-1948)

A Jury of Her Peers, 1917. Pioneer values, loneliness, rural midwestern women, quilts & knotting & log cabin pattern, trifles, tampering evidence, sorority, surrogate voice & canary & golden cage, crooked stitches, heart fire, apron, prison, homemaking instinct, female work, separate spheres, regret & sympathy, secret “trial”, acquittal sentence.