Midwestern Gothic
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Midwestern Gothic is a literary subgenre of the Gothic writing style. It a relatively new term in the realm of literature and is unique to American literature. Much like the early twentieth-century subgenre Southern Gothic, Midwestern Gothic chooses to expand on the grotesque, every-day features of the Midwest, focusing on prevalent themes such as the automotive industry, the waxing and waning economy, and the uproar of racial bigotry. A few of the more noteworthy features of Midwestern Gothic are the ability of the writer to create tragically flawed characters, crude and often confrontational or controversial situations, and the advocacy of experimental styles of mode and narration.
Sherwood Anderson is thought to be the originator of Midwestern Gothic with the publication of his stark portrayal of the everyman and woman in his collection of tales Winesburg, Ohio, although the term was coined many years after his death by Robert James Russell, a graduate student at Oxford Brookes University. While focusing on the advent of modernism and postmodernism in American literature, Russell revealed there had never been an explosion of literature from within the Midwest, which he argues has a great deal of myth and mythology alone in itself. He later opted that a new subgenre be commended to house the few fine examples of Midwest living that had already been produced and to provide an area to showcase the next generation of Midwest authors and their works to come.
The reach of Anderson's influence is thought to extend to the works of T. S. Eliot and William Faulkner, to name a few. Today, Midwestern Gothic encompasses a group of new writers, specifically those who fall under the moniker Generation Y, who are united to bring about, much as William Faulkner helped perpetrate himself in the South, the Midwestern Renaissance.
Another noteworthy example of Midwestern Gothic is Mainstreet, by Sinclair Lewis.
