ENG 210-01 - Studies in Genre (Spring)

4 credits (Spring)

The Gothic Novel. In this course, we will examine developments in the history of the Gothic novel from Horace Walpole’s novella The Castle of Otranto (1764) to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898). Along the way, we will read fiction that explores the potential for Gothic terror in the supernatural, in the law, in science, in religion, in love, and in psychological disorders. Although the Gothic novel explicitly tells stories of strange or unnatural occurrences, it is a genre authors use to exploit and analyze real-world anxieties about various instantiations of modernity, including religious and racial diversity, economic and political shifts, non-normative gender and sexuality, and even (self-reflexively) the immoral influence of fiction on young readers. During the semester, you will write a comparative essay, a review of relevant literary criticism, and one longer research project forming a historicist or theoretical argument. There will also be a few short oral presentations. Authors will include Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew G. Lewis, William Godwin, Charles Brockden Brown, Emily Brontë, Florence Marryat, Marie Corelli, and Henry James.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Shanafelt