ENGLISH 256 - The Gothic Novel

Institution:

Hobart William Smith Colleges

Subject:

Description:

This course will explore the Gothic novel from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, when Bram Stoker's Dracula first appeared. Disparaged as sensational reading likely to corrupt young women and as something that distracted men from more important things, Gothic novels were extremely popular from the moment Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto found its way into booksellers' shops. It achieved this success against a backdrop of tightening social strictures on the conduct of women of the upper and newly emerging middle classes. Alongside exciting, often titillating stories of abducted maidens, vampires, and demonic monks were numerous treatises enjoining young women to act sensibly, be virtuous, and eschew novel reading. We will explore how some18th century Gothic novels actually reinforce the values and social mores they are accused of undermining, while others subvert those values they profess to uphold. We will also explore the ways in which the definition of what is horrible or terrifying changed in response to social and historical realities, i.e. after the revolutions-political, industrial, and scientific-of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuri es. (Offered every three yea

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

WWW.HWS.EDU

Phone Number:

(315) 781-3000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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