Year: Final
Part of the year: Full Year
Module Leader: Nicola Bowring
Assessments:
Keywords:
Gothic; horror; terror; Romanticism; Victorianism; literary criticism; literary history; close reading; politics; psychoanalysis; women’s writing; fiction; the sublime; science and technology; race
Description:
The module will begin by exploring Romanticism’s Gothic impulse, examining the rise of the Gothic Romance in the late eighteenth century, before investigating its development into the nineteenth century. Each week, the module will consider a key literary text from the period alongside a theoretical issue in order to establish a critical vocabulary from which to interpret and understand Gothic’s many manifestations. By considering the historical, cultural, aesthetic and ideological background to this mode of writing, the module will trace the ways in which Gothic is both a conservative and a reactionary genre; supporting and challenging our conceptions of nature/ nurture, individual/ society, self/ other, wild/ domestic, natural/ supernatural, male/ female, beauty/ monstrosity, intercourse/ rape.
Prerequisites: N/A
Useful Information:
1780-1830; Gothic; Romanticism; Victorianism; race; science; politics; sex
Set texts will include (but are not limited to):
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto [novel]; available in multiple modern editions
Matthew Lewis, The Monk [novel]; available in multiple modern editions
Anne Radcliffe, The Italian [novel]; available in multiple modern editions
Marquis de Sade, Justine [novel]; available in multiple modern editions
Bram Stoker, Dracula [novel]; available in multiple modern editions
John Polidori, The Vampyre [novel]; available in multiple modern editions
Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray [novel]; available in multiple modern editions
Teaching methods/structure:
Lectures; seminars; workshops; online activities; independent reading and thinking
Please view the module specification for the learning outcomes for this module.
Contact details for further queries (module leader):
Nicola Bowring (nicola.bowring@ntu.ac.uk )