Publisher's Synopsis
Moving from America's Puritan roots through the 19th and 20th centuries, The Gruesome Doorway examines the significance of the American Grotesque through an analysis of the works of Hawthorne, Poe, Crane, Norris, Anderson, West, and O'Connor. Dr. Uruburu explores the backgrounds and sources of the genre known as the Grotesque and reappraises the particular application of its unconventional conventions in American literature. The study reveals that this genre is peculiarly suited to a nation consistently torn between high ideals and catch-penny realities, whose inhabitants are pulled through the gruesome doorway into the landscape of the Grotesque.
