Dark Undercurrent——the Development of the "Incest" Motif in Early American Gothic Fiction

Gothic incest,arising from the abnormal desires of the extremely repressed minds,has been a common motif in gothic literature and a principal source of gothic horror.This paper attempts to trace the evolution of the incest motif in the hands of four gothic masters----Brown,Poe,and Hawthorne through a close and comparative reading of their gothic masterpieces between 1798 and 1852.