• • Home
  • Undergraduate Study
• • Postgrad English
  • Postgrad Creative Writing
• • Research
  • Staff
• • News & Events
  • Contact Us
• • Resources for Current Students

Undergraduate Menu

Search using keywords/tags or full text search.

ENGL 378: Children in Horror Fiction and Film

Course Convenor: Dr Jayne Steel

Seminar Time and Venue: Thursday 3pm – 5pm, Bowland North SR21 (Term 1)
Film Screening Time and Venue: Tuesday 2pm – 5pm, Bowland North SR1 (All Weeks apart from 7); George Fox LT4 (Week 7 only)

Course Aims and Objectives:
This module will focus upon the motif of ‘the child’ within 20th century horror fiction and film. Students will expand upon key critical and theoretical skills and apply these skills to popular fiction and film adaptation, using the motif of the child as a focus for this. The module will also encourage students to interrogate texts from a range of theoretical perspectives such as cultural materialism, psychoanalysis and feminism in order to reveal how and why metonymic representations of the child in the horror genre supply an important cultural, psychological and political point of reference for literary studies.

More specifically, the course aims to explore the cultural significance of the motif of the child in horror fiction and film through themes such as the villain, the victim, madness and sexuality; to analyse the process concerning adaptation from novel to film; to show how issues relating to gender are crucial to the genre; and to develop in students a sophisticated ability to think critically and analytically about how an exploration of popular fiction and film can reveal deep cultural anxieties and fixations at an historical and psychological level.

Assessment:
1 x 2,000-word essay (50%); 1 x creative project (50%)

Submission deadline:
Essay = by 12 noon on Monday Week 8/Term 1
Project = by 12 noon on Monday Week 1/Term 2

Learning Outcomes:
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:

• identify and comment on the cultural, political and psychological importance of the trope of the child in horror fiction and film
• relate key themes explored to gender issues
• apply key theoretical and critical skills to the texts discussed
• think creatively and imaginatively about the ways in which adaptation from novel to film can ‘change’ a text

Set Texts:
 Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1993)
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (2002)
William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (1971)
Stephen King, The Shining (1977)
Stephen King, Cujo (1981)
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (1991)
Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now (2006)

Set Films:
 The Innocents (1961), dir. Jack Clayton
The Exorcist (1973), dir. William Friedkin
The Shining (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick
Interview with the Vampire (1994), dir. Neil Jordan
The Ring (1998), dir. Hadeo Nakata and (2002), dir. Gore Verbinski
The Sixth Sense (1999), dir. M. Night Shyamalan
Don’t Look Now (1973) dir. Nicholas Roeg
The Lovely Bones (2010) dir. Peter Jackson

Seminar Topics:

Week 1
‘The Evil or Innocent Child?’ Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898) and film version The Innocents (1961), dir. Jack Clayton.

Week 2
‘Death of a Child and Anamophosis as a Warning’: Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now (1970) and film version (1973), dir. Nicholas Roeg.

Week 3
‘Paternal Metaphors’: William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (1971) and film version (1973), dir. William Friedkin.

Week 4
‘The Abused Child and Imagination’: Stephen King, The Shining (1977) and film version (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Week 5
‘Children and Animals’: Stephen King, Cujo (1981) and film version, (1983), dir. Lewis Teague.

Week 6
Independent Study Week

Week 7
‘Children and Sexuality’: Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (1991) and film version (1994), dir. Neil Jordan.

Week 8
‘Children and Technology’: Adaptations of Kojo Suzuki’s novel, The Ring (1991). A comparison of the film version (1998) dir. Hadeo Nakata and (2002), dir. Gore Verbinski.

Week 9
‘That Red Riding Hood Thing’: Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (2002) and film version (2010) dir. Peter Jackson

Week 10
‘The Sixth Sense’: Peter Lerangis, The Sixth Sense screenplay (found online) and film version, (1999), dir. M. Night Shyamalan.

Back to: ENGL 376

Forward to ENGL 379

Courses Index