Southern Ontario Gothic is a

subgenre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

of the Gothic novel genre and a feature of

Canadian literature Canadian literature is the literature of a multicultural country, written in languages including Canadian English, Canadian French, Indigenous languages, and many others such as Canadian Gaelic. Influences on Canadian writers are broad both g ...

that comes from

Southern Ontario Southern Ontario is a primary region of the province of Ontario, Canada, the other primary region being Northern Ontario. It is the most densely populated and southernmost region in Canada. The exact northern boundary of Southern Ontario is disp ...

. This region includes

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

, Southern Ontario's major industrial cities (

Windsor Windsor may refer to: Places Australia * Windsor, New South Wales ** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area * Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland **Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, Hamilton, Kitchener, St. Thomas, Oshawa, St. Catharines), and the surrounding countryside. While the genre may also feature other areas of Ontario, Canada, and the world as narrative locales, this region provides the core settings.

Overview

The term was first used in Graeme Gibson's ''Eleven Canadian Novelists'' (1972) to recognize an existing tendency to apply aspects of the Gothic novel to writing based in and around Southern Ontario.''The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature''. 1997. Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada, p.1085. In an interview with

Timothy Findley Timothy Irving Frederick Findley Timothy Findley's
entry in

The Last of the Crazy People'' shared similarities with the American

Southern Gothic Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, country music, film and television that are heavily influenced by Gothic elements and the American South. Common themes of Southern Gothic include storytelling of deeply flawed, disturbing or ...

genre, to which Findley replied, "...sure, it's Southern Gothic: Southern ''Ontario'' Gothic." Notable writers of this subgenre include

Alice Munro Alice Ann Munro (; ; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move f ...

, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Jane Urquhart, Marian Engel, James Reaney and Barbara Gowdy.

Characteristics

Like the Southern Gothic of American writers such as

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

Flannery O'Connor Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern literature, Southe ...

and

Eudora Welty Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel '' The Optimist's Daughter'' won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerou ...

, Southern Ontario Gothic analyzes and critiques social conditions such as race, gender, religion and politics, but in a Southern Ontario context. Southern Ontario Gothic is generally characterized by a stern realism set against the dour small-town

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

morality stereotypical of the region, and often has underlying themes of moral hypocrisy. Actions and people that act against humanity, logic, and morality all are portrayed unfavourably, and one or more characters may be suffering from some form of mental illness. In a review of Alice Munro's '' Dear Life'' for ''

Quill & Quire ''Quill & Quire'' is a Canadian magazine about the book and publishing industry. The magazine was launched in 1935 and has an average circulation of 5,000 copies per issue, with a publisher-claimed readership of 25,000. ''Quill & Quire'' reviews ...

'', literary critic James Grainger writes that "Violence, illness, and reputations ruined by a single indiscretion are accepted in Munro’s secretive, repressed communities as a kind of levelling mechanism, rough justice for those who dare to strive for something finer." The Gothic novel has traditionally examined the role of evil in the human soul, and has incorporated dark or horrific imagery to create the desired setting. Some (but not all) writers of Southern Ontario Gothic use supernatural or magic realist elements; a few deviate from realism entirely, in the manner of the fantastical gothic novel. Virtually all dwell to a certain extent upon the

grotesque Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus ...

. Often, these elements are combined to highlight themes present in the wider canon of

. An overarching sense of displacement either socially, physically or psychologically often sets the stage for supernatural elements, transgressive behavior or inner turmoil. Accompanying displacement is a nightmarish feeling of spiritual imprisonment in a Southern Ontario setting that is characterized by an eroding societal value system and an atmosphere that stifles and fears individual means of expression. Many sources of terror and horror are created when a character tries to break free of the strictures of established norms within these communities. This lends itself to a motif of 'Canadian' survival that is applied to scenarios dependent on enduring abstract horrors which originate from within a character who is often living in a small village, town or city of the region. In a review of Cynthia Sugars' book ''Canadian Gothic: Literature, History and the Spectre of Self-Invention'', Amy Ransom claims that Southern Ontario Gothic seeks to tell the stories of generations of settlers in a way that uses elements of the taboo, the surreal and the fantastical to form a new common identity in a postcolonial world. For example, the family of prolific Southern Ontario Gothic author, Alice Munro, originally settled on Huron lands which were a basis of many of her shorter works.

Notable works

Notable works of the genre include Davies' '' Deptford Trilogy'', Findley's '' Headhunter'', Atwood's ''

Alias Grace ''Alias Grace'' is a historical fiction novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. First published in 1996 by McClelland & Stewart, it won the Canadian Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The story fictionalizes the notoriou ...

'' and '' The Blind Assassin'', and Munro's ''Selected Stories''.

Criticism

Writer David Ingham describes Southern Ontario Gothic as having "little or nothing to distinguish it from everyday, garden-variety type realism."Ingham, David
"Bashing the Fascists: The Moral Dimensions of Findley's Fiction"
''Studies in Canadian Literature.'' Retrieved on December 3, 2007.

References

{{Fantasy fiction Canadian literary movements Horror genres Gothic fiction * Postcolonial literature

Overview

Characteristics

Notable works

Criticism

See also

References