AMERICAN ROMANCE REVISITED. FROM GEOGRAPHIES OF EXPLORATION TO THE GOTHICISM OF EASTERN EUROPE

A longue durée perspective informs this reconsideration of American romance, which ranges from the canonical members of the tradition, including its transatlantic dimension, to 20^th and 21^st century American explorations of Eastern Europe.
This investigation thus places in the same imaginative continuum what may appear to be disparate American cultural figures: authors routinely recognized as part of the American romance tradition (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, E.A. Poe), the novelist acknowledged as monumentalizing the American discovery of Europe (Henry James), and writers most often associated with a representation of Eastern European space as exotic or gothic – from travelers and journalists with differing cultural, professional and personal agendas (Mabel Potter Daggett, Robert Kaplan) to best-selling novelists who capitalize, to a large extent, upon cultural clichés (Elizabeth Kostova). Restoring these latter American views upon Eastern Europe to a romance continuum serves to underline their fictionality, thus adding to the work done by scholars who deplore the fact that sensationalist renderings are appreciated for their testimonial value.