English and American Gothic Tales

Kursbeschreibung / -kommentar

"Gothic signifies a writing of excess. It appears in the awful obscurity that haunted eighteenth-century rationality and morality. It shadows the despairing ecstasies of Romantic idealism and individualism and the uncanny dualities of Victorian realism and decadence. [...] In the twentieth century, in diverse and ambiguous way, Gothic figures have continued to shadow the progress of modernity with counter-narratives displaying the underside of enlightenment and humanist values." (Botting 1-2)

From Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" (1764), to Charles Maturin's "Melmoth, The Wanderer" (1820), to the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, to countless other works well into the 21st century, Gothic tales, much like the uncanny creatures that tend to inhabit them, have long since proven their longevity. Prototypical Gothic motifs - damsels in distress, domineering males, transgression, excess, gore, sins of the past - are still alive and well in current writing, continuing the long tradition of "counter-narratives" that shed light on the darker side of human nature, culture, and society.

In this class, we will trace the development of Gothic narratives from the 18th century onward, focussing in particular on questions of genre, mode, mood, as well as cultural tinges of Gothic, from England, to Ireland, to America and the United States. Over the course of the semester, we will approach Gothic texts from a variety of academic perspectives, such as feminist theory and narratology.

Students will be required to...

- participate actively and regularly,
- discuss and familiarize themselves with the Gothic genre and the myriad ways it can be approached,
- hold short presentations,
- write a term paper (4.000-5.000 words).

Please purchase the following books:

- Walpole, Horace. "The Castle of Otranto."
- Shelley, Mary. "Frankenstein." (Norton Critical edition)
- Palahniuk, Chuck. "Haunted."

More Gothic texts will be uploaded over the course of the semester.