ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Southern Gothic is a mode or genre prevalent in literature from the early 19th century to this day. Characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation.

Detailed explanation-2: -As Charles Crow notes, the grotesque, “is a quality that overlaps with the Gothic, but neither is necessary or sufficient for the other.”21 Characters with physical deformities, so-called freaks, feature heavily in the Southern Grotesque.

Detailed explanation-3: -In literature, the word grotesque carries with it the aesthetics of the sculpted gargoyles and chimeras-it refers to the monstrous, the malformed, the frightening, and the outright strange.

Detailed explanation-4: -In fiction, characters are usually considered grotesque if they induce both empathy and disgust. (A character who inspires disgust alone is simply a villain or a monster.) Obvious examples would include the physically deformed and the mentally deficient, but people with cringe-worthy social traits are also included.

Detailed explanation-5: -The grotesque, as I view him, always appears in Southern fiction as either a physically or mentally deformed figure. If he appears as one of the physically deformed, he may be a cripple, a dwarf, a deaf mute, a blind man, or an androgynous adolescent (i.e., the deformed as the unformed).