An in-depth treatment of a current area of special concern within the field of English Literature. Courses offered previously include: Dickens and Englishness; Race, Class, Gender, Culture: The American Dream in Literature; The Innocents Abroad: Perceptions of Italy in American, European and British Writing; Topics in World Literature: Masterpieces in Western Fiction. May be taken more than once for credit with different topics.

This course charts the evolution and legacy of the gothic tradition in fiction, examining examples of early gothic novels and considering the influence of the gothic imagination from romanticism through to nineteenth century sensation fiction.  The course traces the emergence of the genre in a particular political moment, considering its subversive possibilities and its importance in debates about sensibility, sexuality, marriage rights and laws, religion, the new science, and theories of psychology. Attention is given to the ways in which this tradition is enmeshed in anxieties about sexuality, gender, race and class.  We will outline emerging definitions of the novel as a genre and contemplate the particular ways in which gothic and later sensation fiction attempt to disrupt or expand those definitions. We will also consider how the nature of contemporary journalism informs the subject and style of these novels, particularly with reference to anxieties about Victorian crime and modernity and the New Woman. Nineteenth-century visual culture and new technologies will also help us to understand aspects of the Victorian appetite for the dramatic and the sensational.
 
Possible texts could include:  Lewis’s The Monk, Godwin’s Caleb Williams, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho,  Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights,  Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Willkie Collins’s The Woman in White, Ellen Wood’s East Lynne, Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret or Aurora Floyd, and the scandalous Ouida’s Moths, In Maremma, or Bebee: Two Little Wooden Shoes.

Students will read a selection of novels in the gothic and sensation fiction genre and will become familiar with their historical, cultural and theoretical implications.  

MOODLE COURSE:  Please see the Moodle Course for a more detailed outline of week-by-week readings, discussions, assignments, and other materials.