CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.
The vogue of Gothic story in America; the novels of Charles Brockden Brown; his use of the "explained" supernatural; his Godwinian theory; his construction and style; Washington Irving's genial tales of terror; Hawthorne's reticence and melancholy; suggestions for eery stories in his notebooks; Twice-Told Tales; Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter; Hawthorne's sympathetic insight into character; The House of the Seven Gables, and the ancestral curse; his half-credulous treatment of the supernatural; unfinished stories; a contrast of Hawthorne's methods with those of Edgar Allan Poe; A Manuscript found in a Bottle, the first of Poe's tales of terror; the skill of Poe illustrated in Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Cash of Amontillado; Poe's psychology; his technique in The Pit and the Pendulum and in his detective stories; his influence; the art of Poe; his ideal in writing a short story. Pp. 197-220.