Wieland is the first and most important novel by the father of American Literature, Charles Brockden Brown. WIELAND, directed by writer/producer/actor Cody Knotts, is the first adaptation of the book that influenced even the most famous Gothic horror novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Wieland and Brown were major influences on other writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and H.P. Lovecraft, including modern scribes like Peter Straub and Stephen King.
In Brown’s Wieland, narrator Clara Wieland tells the complex story of her brother Theodore (also referred to as Wieland) descending into a religious fervor that becomes indistinguishable from madness.
However, Brown did more than write novels: he also created the first literary clubs in New York and Philadelphia. These clubs helped foster and grow America’s unique literary tradition and forge a path as separate as the new nation from its mother kingdom. Most significantly, Brown’s work moved the American style of Gothic Horror from the castles of the old world to the woods of the new one.
Cody Knott’s WIELAND is set to premiere in January at the Modern Language Association in Philidelphia. This coming September, excerpts of the film will be shown at the University of Knottingham’s Charles Brockden Brown Conference in the UK.
