Recommended Citation Strawn, Patricia Garden, "The "explained supernatural " in Carles Brockden Brown's Wieland " (1968). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. Paper 7909.

"Pudd'nhead Wilson should be recognized as a classic of the use of popular modes — of the sensational and the melodramatic for the pur poses of significant F. R, Leavis ' comment on Mark Twain's classic could just as accurately be applied to Charles Brockden Brown's first major work, Wieland. Brown used both the sensational and the melodramatic forms to produce one of the first novels in America and the first gothic romance of American authorship. Jane Lundblad defines the gothic novel as containing some or all of the following characteristics: a manuscript, either translated from the original or reported by a character who gives an account of his experiences; a castle; a mysterious crime; religion; Italians (or Spaniards); a deform ity in a character; ghosts, either supernatural or "false phenomena that seem supernatural to the beholder but are rationally explained; " magic; 2 nature; blood; works of art; and armored knights