Gothic Fiction 3301-LB2029

This course is geared specifically to the needs of students taking an interest in Gothic fiction. Starting with such elementary issues as: the various implications of the term "Gothic", the origin of the form, the course will introduce the students to the most significant works, issues and debates within the field of Gothic studies.
The Gothic is notable for its mobility and its ability to reconstitute itself anew in the light of changing social, political and cultural circumstances. Since its advent in the second half of the 18th century, it has assumed a variety of manifestations and forms, adapting and developing in response to transitions in literary and intellectual fashion. This course will be tracing the transformations of the genre through history, from the "classic" Gothic to its 19th and 20th century transmutations.
Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel proper, proved a seminal work which had much influence on the development of a genre. Walpole's novel influenced the work of such writers as Ann Radcliffe, William Beckford and Matthew Lewis. These novels were popular with readers for their historical settings as well as for representation of supernatural events and evocation of terror. The genre moved into the 19th century: influenced by Romanticism, it generated a new set of themes and motifs. The figures of a wicked villain and persecuted heroine, inherited from the previous century, were supplemented by the figures of the vampire, the searcher after forbidden knowledge, and the wanderer. In the novels of James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson, the motif of the double (Doppelganger) acquired prominence.
It is often claimed that Gothic literature has flourished at times of social and political upheaval, for instance, in the late 18th century. It is no coincidence that the decade of the French Revolution was the period when the Gothic novel was most popular. Such a theory could be supported by the sudden resurgence of Gothic at the end of the 19th century. The age which produced many powerful cultural myths, including R. L. Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Bram Stoker's Dracula, was a time marked by growing fears of degeneration back to a pre-civilised state. England was an imperial power in decline.The traditional values and family structures of the middle class were disintegrating, threatened by the emergence of such figures as Dracula and Dr Jekyll. London, the capital of the civilized world, was often represented as a site of cultural decay and a source of menace. Stoker's novel was one of many examples of fiction in which the security of English society was undermined. In addition to vampirism, what made Dracula alien and fearful to late Victorian readers were his origins in the 'backward' east of Europe and his acts of sexual transgression.The diversification that increasingly characterize the Gothic genre gave rise to some new categories and subdivisions, such as: the Gothic thriller (Sheridan Le Fanu, Wilkie Collins), the tale of terror focusing on psychological disturbance and obsessive states of mind (Edgar Allan Poe), and the ghost story centering on uncanny experiences and events. The versatility of the Gothic is also reflected in the parodic versions of Gothic themes and conventions (Jane Austen). In reworking Gothic motifs and subjecting them to parodic revision, these writers challenge the traditional notion of and the prejudiced attitudes to Gothic fiction.
While discussing a selection of Gothic novels and tales, an attempt will be made to contextualize and re-evaluate them in the light of changing currents in literary crticism and theory, such as psychoanalysis, feminist and poststucturalist criticisms.