Module description
Terror expands the soul, said Ann Radcliffe. Does it? This module explores Gothic from a variety of angles and across a range of genres -- not only poetry, fiction, and drama, but also autobiography, medical case history, and philosophy. We shall examine the emergence of Gothic in the 1760s and track its development through the Romantic period. Along the way, we will study its links to, among other cultural phenomena, the Gothic revival in architecture; the evolving aesthetics of the sublime; changing views about ghosts and ghost-seeing; new medical models of dreams, hallucinations, and nervous disorders; new optical media for generating spectral visions and apparitions; psychological dimensions of European imperialism; radical politics and the Revolutions in America and France. Danger, romance, madness, spectres, castles, tyrants, banditti – it's all here.
Texts studied this year include: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764); William Beckford, Vathek (1786); Helen Maria Williams, 'Part of an Irregular Fragment' (1786); Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest (1791); Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland, or The Transformation (1798); Mary Robinson, 'The Haunted Beach' (1800); Joanna Baillie, Orra (1812); Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel (1707-1800); Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821); James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).
Assessment details
3000 word essay
Educational aims & objectives
To introduce students to the original and key texts of Gothic literature, established as a genre in the long eighteenth century, with appropriate understanding of their historical context, their place and significance in the history of ideas, and some of the visual and material contexts relevant to their interpretation. The course will enable students to understand a range of theories about the genre, develop appropriately a selection of theoretical tools for understanding Gothic texts, and engage with critical literature about them. The module will also further the literary critical skills of students by the practice of close reading, the expression of their ideas in discussion and in writing, and the development of foundational skills in interpreting images and material forms through studying them in relation to Gothic. Students will also acquire some understanding of how and why Gothic is a genre which exceeds a long eighteenth-century timeframe.
Learning outcomes
- Develop an understanding of some of the key ways Gothic has been constructed - and contested - as a genre, especially within the contexts of gender, class, race and sexuality.
- Gain an understanding of 'the Gothic' through the context of its literary, cultural and political history.
- Acquire knowledge of the major critical approaches that have been used to discuss these texts and concepts, including a basic understanding of how the literary critical history of the genre informs its interpretation (for instance, through feminist or queer readings).
- Develop skills in close readings of literary texts, and linking them with key concepts from theoretical readings.
Teaching pattern
1 hour lecture and 1 hour seminar weekly
Suggested reading list
Texts may vary each year but are likely to include: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764), Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757); Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751); Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794); Jane Austen Northanger Abbey (1817); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818).