How Did Truman Capote Change American Literature

Truman Capote is a master of fiction, non-fiction, and Reportage. He helped develop “new-journalism”, which changed American literature forever. He is recognized as an extremely brave writer who addressed issues of gender, sexuality, and otherness ages before our American society came to terms with how to deal with these issues. He was not only an artist whose subject matter was well before his time but an artist whose work changed the face of American writing. To call one of his works more essential than the others is to miss crucial steps in how he developed his style, and to undermine the integrity of a work of genius. That being said, this essay will focus on an array of Capote’s work; particularly, the southern gothic and grotesque. In …show more content…
Classic gothic literature was largely popular during the nineteenth-century. Stories like Lewis’s The Monk and Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are spot on examples of what the gothic truly is -- upper essolant society coming to terms with its fears. In these gothic stories, we see dilapidated mansions or castles, gloomy streets, fantastic occurrences of grand proportions, and most importantly -- repression of an internalized fear. In Stevenson, the repressed fear of death manifested itself in Dr. Jekyll's terrifying transformation into Mr. Hyde. In Lewis, the bleeding nun’s terrifying appearance springs from a repression of female sexuality. As we can clearly see, classic gothic has a strong focus on the horrific manifestation of a repressed fear; specifically, repressed fear that results in the fantastic. These fantastic images which spring from repressed fears are how the gothic “articulated the controversial issues of incest, murder, and promiscuous sexuality” which “created an exciting arena for the development of the supernatural” and the fantastic (Mitchell-Peters 110). These controversial issues were the “unspeakable” which is why instead of being directly addressed, they were indirectly present as images of the fantastic and supernatural. This kind of gothic is only in part similar to the southern gothic which Capote encapsulates in his work. Gothic tropes are

Show More

How Did Truman Capote Change American Literature

Related Documents: How Did Truman Capote Change American Literature

Holly Golightly as an existential protagonist Essays