"Bartleby" in the evolution of the Gothic tradition.

• Main Author: Goh, Evan Yu Fan.
• Other Authors: Terence Richard Dawson
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Language::English
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52216
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” was first published in 1853, nearly a century after Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, and sixty years after Brown’s Wieland. The Gothic Tradition, as it begun, was not received well by literary critics of the time. However, as more writers became aware and influenced by the Gothic genre, what we know now as the Gothic Tradition was created and refined over the course of a century of exploration and development. In this research paper, I will first consider the Gothic Tradition as it begun in Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, then the rise of the American Gothic in Brown’s Wieland, and finally our discussion of Melville’s “Bartleby”.