Course Description
The years covered by this class saw the emergence of the Gothic, a mode of literature that explores the dark side of human nature. By reading a range of Gothic fiction from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we’ll examine how Gothic conventions--supernatural encounters, haunted houses, monstrous transformations, outrageous villains, embedded narratives, and unreliable narrators—have contributed to our modern understanding of individual identity as complex and multi-faceted. Gothic literature flourishes at moments of social upheaval and political crisis, and we’ll explore how writers including Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Jane Austen used the genre to comment on some of the major changes occurring between 1700 and 1900, including the American Revolution, industrialization and urbanization, imperial expansion, and the development of new technologies from typewriters to railways. Together we’ll ask why and how the Gothic originated in the eighteenth century and why and how it continues to persist at the current moment in movies, video games, and comic books, among other forms of media.
Course Outcomes
- To identify literary conventions associated with Gothic fiction and explain how they work
- To gain familiarity with the historical origins of the Gothic and track the genre’s changes over time
- To become better critical readers, writers, and thinkers, capable of closely analyzing texts and making connections between them
Required books
Matthew Lewis, The Monk (Oxford World's Classics)
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (Longman Cultural Edition)
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Penguin)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (Penguin)
additional short readings will be available on Canvas