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ENGL 371: Victorian Gothic

Course Convenor: Dr Catherine Spooner

Seminar Time and Venue: Thursday 9am – 11am, Bowland North SR16 (Term 2)

Course Aims and Objectives
In the Victorian period, the decaying castles, corrupt priests and ancestral curses that were so prominent in the first phase of the Gothic novel gave way to an increased emphasis on spectral and monstrous others: ghosts, werewolves, vampires, mummies and other creatures of the night. The course will explore these phenomena in their historical, cultural and literary contexts, with particular focus on emerging discourses of gender, sexuality, colonialism and class. The course will pay special attention to visual aspects of the Gothic, examining book illustration, painting and photography from the period and their relationship with Gothic texts. Students will be asked to consider the relationship between newly emergent forms of modernity (from medical discourses to the typewriter) and the preoccupation with history and the past that is a generic feature of the Gothic. Texts will comprise a selection of novels and short fiction, with additional images and extracts from contextual works provided on MOODLE and in class.

Assessment
Ongoing participation in MOODLE-based exercises leading to a portfolio of 400-1,200 words (20%); 1 x 4,000-word essay (80%)

Submission Deadlines
MOODLE-based exercises will be posted online in Weeks 1-8 of each term, following the seminar, and you will have one week to post your response (minimum 100, maximum 350 words, engaging sensibly with the topic). Participation in the exercises will constitute 10% of your overall mark for the module. Your portfolio will consist of your four preferred pieces from this ongoing assessment.

Portfolio = by 12 noon on Monday Week 10/Term 2
Long Essay = by 12 noon on Monday Week 1/Term 3

Contact Hours
One seminar of 90 minutes per week (with the exception of Study Week)

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course students should be equipped

• to identify and comment on major preoccupations of Gothic literature and their representation within Victorian texts
• to problematise definitions of Gothic and its status as a genre, mode, or set of discourses, and to discuss the relationship between Gothic and other generic forms (e.g. the ghost story) closely related to it
• to explore theoretical notions of gender, sexuality, colonialism, and class in relation to the texts and to critique images of spectral and monstrous others from an informed critical perspective
• to locate Gothic texts in a specific historical context with reference to Victorian culture
• to formulate critical analyses of texts both orally and in writing

Set Texts and Seminar Programme

Note: You are welcome to download texts from the web where they are available but you should remember that you are still required to bring a copy to seminars.
  
Week 1
Ghosts 1
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

Week 2
Ghosts 2
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

Week 3
Ghosts 3
Selected stories from Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert (eds.), The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories

Week 4
Werewolves
Frederick Marryat, 'The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains' (1839); Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Mark of the Beast’ (1890), Eric Stenbock, 'The Other Side' (1893); Clemence Housman, 'The Were Wolf' (1896)

Week 5
Vampires 1
J. Sheridan Le Fanu, ‘Carmilla’ (1872); Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Olalla’ (1885)

Week 6
Independent Study Week

Week 7
Femmes fatales 1
H. Rider Haggard, She (1887)

Week 8
Femmes fatales 2
Vernon Lee, Hauntings (1890)

Week 9
Vampires 2
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Week 10
Vampires 3
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Back to: ENGL 369

Froward to: ENGL 373

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