ENGL 436 - 19th Century Gothic Fiction

Institution:

Trinity College

Subject:

Description:

In this course, you will become acquainted with the castles, mansions, monasteries, lunatics, ghosts, and monsters that kept (and continue to keep) readers awake with a light on at night. Authors will include members of the Shelley circle in England (poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, fiction writers Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and John Polidori), Charlotte and Emily Bront , Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry James. The reading will be supplemented by historical and critical reading, which will help us to establish what was at stake in the genre in the past and why it still persists in the present. Topics will include how gothic represents threats to the social order, cloaks and exposes taboo sexuality; approaches or evokes the sublime; constructs the alienated self; anticipates Freudian concepts of the "unconscious" and "uncanny"; and demonizes peoples (ancestors, ethnicities, races, etc.). We will also consider how present day literary critics and theorists have constructed male versus female traditions of gothic and treated the genre as political allegory. Open to undergraduates with permission of the instructor. For graduate students, this course satisfies the requirement of author-centered study. For undergraduates: a course emphasizing literature written after 1800. 1.00 units, Seminar

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.Trincoll.edu

Phone Number:

(860) 297-2000

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

The Course Profile information is provided and updated by third parties including the respective institutions. While the institutions are able to update their information at any time, the information is not independently validated, and no party associated with this website can accept responsibility for its accuracy.