BRITISH GOTHIC WRITING: 1760-1900

Course Information
TitleΤΟ ΓΟΤΘΙΚΟ ΣΤΗΝ ΑΓΓΛΙΚΗ ΛΟΓΟΤΕΧΝΙΑ: 1760-1900 / BRITISH GOTHIC WRITING: 1760-1900
CodeΛογ6-338
FacultyPhilosophy
SchoolEnglish Language and Literature
Cycle / Level1st / Undergraduate, 2nd / Postgraduate
Teaching PeriodWinter/Spring
CommonNo
StatusActive
Course ID600007969

Programme of Study: 2024-2025

Registered students: 0
OrientationAttendance TypeSemesterYearECTS
KORMOSElective CoursesWinter/Spring-6
Class Information
Academic Year2019 – 2020
Class PeriodWinter
Faculty Instructors
Weekly Hours3
Total Hours39
Class ID
600154620
Course Type 2021
Specific Foundation
Course Type 2016-2020
  • Scientific Area
Course Type 2011-2015
Specific Foundation / Core
Mode of Delivery
  • Face to face
Digital Course Content
Erasmus
The course is also offered to exchange programme students.
Language of Instruction
  • English (Instruction, Examination)
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course students will be expected: • To have acquired a deeper knowledge of the history of the Gothic as a literary form and register within nineteenth-century British literature and a theoretical awareness of the literary practice involved in writing within this form; • To have broadened and deepened their critical and theoretical skills in reading and understanding complex texts
General Competences
  • Apply knowledge in practice
  • Retrieve, analyse and synthesise data and information, with the use of necessary technologies
  • Adapt to new situations
  • Make decisions
  • Work autonomously
  • Work in teams
  • Work in an interdisciplinary team
  • Generate new research ideas
  • Appreciate diversity and multiculturality
  • Demonstrate social, professional and ethical commitment and sensitivity to gender issues
  • Be critical and self-critical
  • Advance free, creative and causative thinking
Course Content (Syllabus)
Course description and course syllabus - This course aims to provide students with an understanding of a significant and influential literary genre within a broad historical context (Romantic and Victorian). We will concentrate on classic gothic novels (Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, John Polidori's The Vampyre, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) but will also consider gothic features in the poetry and art of the period. At the same time we shall explore the genre’s relation to notions of identity, sexuality, power and imperialism. Attention will be given to the specific socio-historical conditions which produced the gothic form as well as to the ways elements of the genre (e.g. the fantastic, its psychological dimension) persisted throughout the nineteenth century, undergoing various transformations. Weeks 1, 2, 3 Defining the Gothic  The historical, political, and spiritual context  Gothic influences: art, architecture, landscape gardening  Contemporary reception  Gothic partners: the romance and the novel; other genres  The development of the gothic: from the eighteenth century to postmodernism  The contemporary context: what is the place of the gothic in today’s world?  Main critical approaches to the gothic  Textual characteristics of the gothic; gothic elements, themes, and characters & Trott, Nicola “Gothic.” Romanticism: An Oxford Guide. Ed. Nicholas Roe. OUP, 2005, 483‒499 (this section also contains readings of Otranto and Frankenstein which will be of use later). & Ellis, Markman. “Prologue.” The History of Gothic Fiction. Edinburgh UP, 2001. 1‒16. & Botting, Fred. “Gothic Excess and Transgression,” “Gothic Origins.” Gothic. The New Critical Idiom. Routledge, 1996. 1‒43. & Wright, Angela. Gothic Fiction: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. Palgrave, 2007. Chapters 1, 2, 3 (Contemporary Reception; Terror and Horror; the Gothic and the French Revolution) Weeks 4, 5, 6 The Origin of the Gothic KEY TEXT: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764) & Miles, Robert. “Eighteenth-Century Gothic.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Ed. C. Spooner and E. McEvoy. Routledge, 2007. & Ellis, Markman. “History and the Gothic Novel: Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto” The History of Gothic Fiction. Edinburgh UP, 2001. 17‒37. & Botting, Fred. “Gothic Forms.” Gothic. The New Critical Idiom. Routledge, 1996. 1‒43. & Chaplin, Sue. “Narrative Instabilities and the Gothic Narrator.” Gothic Literature: Texts, Contexts, Connections. York Press, 2011. 181‒205. & Chaplin, Sue. “Gothic Bodies.” Gothic Literature: Texts, Contexts, Connections. York Press, 2011. 233‒259. & Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” The Penguin Freud Library. Vol. 14. Trans. and ed. James Strachen. Vol. Ed. Albert Dickson. London: Penguin, 1990. & Punter, David. “The Uncanny.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Ed. C. Spooner and E. McEvoy. Routledge, 2007. 129-136. & Smith, Andrew. “Hauntings.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Ed. C. Spooner and E. McEvoy. Routledge, 2007. 147‒153. & Wright, Angela. “Religion, Nationalism and the Gothic.” Gothic Fiction: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. Palgrave, 2007. Chapt. 4. Weeks 7, 8, 9 The Gothic’s Relationship to the Romantic Movement KEY TEXT: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818; 1831) & Gamer, Michael. “Gothic Fictions and Romantic Writing in Britain.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. CUP, 2002. & Wilt, Judith. “Frankenstein as Mystery Play.” The Endurance of Frankenstein. Ed. George Levine et al. University of California Press, 1979. 31‒48. & Ellis, Markman. “Science, Conspiracy and the Gothic Enlightenment.” The History of Gothic Fiction. Edinburgh UP, 2001. 121-160. & Mellor, Anne. “Frankenstein, Racial Science, and the Yellow Peril.” Frankenstein: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. 2nd Ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012 [1996]. & Moers, Ellen. “Female Gothic.” The Endurance of Frankenstein. Ed. George Levine et al. University of California Press, 1979. 77‒87. & Chaplin, Sue. “Female Gothic.” Gothic Literature: Texts, Contexts, Connections. York Press, 2011. 206‒231. & Wright, Angela. “Gender and the Gothic.” Gothic Fiction: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. Palgrave, 2007. Chapt. 6. & Roberts, Andrew Michael. “Repression in the Family.” Romanticism: An Oxford Guide. Ed. Nicholas Roe. OUP, 2005. 230-235. [A psychoanalytic reading of Frankenstein] Weeks 10, 11, 12 Victorian Gothicism KEY TEXT: Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) & Warwick, Alexandra. “Victorian Gothic.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Ed. C. Spooner and E. McEvoy. Routledge, 2007. 29-37. & Botting, Fred. “Gothic Returns in the 1890s.” Gothic. The New Critical Idiom. Routledge, 1996. 134‒143. & Rago, Jane V. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Robert Louis Stevenson: Writer of Boundaries. Eds. Richard Ambrosini and Richard Dury. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2006. & Literary, scientific and sociohistorical contexts for viewing Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Extracts from Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Katherine Linehan. New York: W.W. Norton 2003. 124-149. & Garrett, Peter K. “Instabilities of Meaning, Morality, and Narration.” Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Katherine Linehan. New York: W.W. Norton 2003. 189-197. Week 13 Coda: New Forms of Gothicism (20th and 21st centuries) The Gothic in Film ‒ Filmic adaptations & Spooner, Catherine. “Gothic in the Twentieth Century.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Ed. C. Spooner and E. McEvoy. Routledge, 2007. 38‒47. & Bruhm, Steven. “The Contemporary Gothic: Why we Need it.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. CUP, 2002.
Keywords
gothic conventions, romance, history, the uncanny, double, Romantic, Victorian, female gothic
Educational Material Types
  • Notes
  • Video lectures
  • Audio
  • Multimedia
  • Book
Use of Information and Communication Technologies
Use of ICT
  • Use of ICT in Course Teaching
  • Use of ICT in Communication with Students
Description
Use of multimedia, power point presentations, exploration of various online databases and digital projects:  HathiTrust Digital Library, http://www.hathitrust.org/  Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/texts  University of Virginia Library, the Electronic Text Center, http://www.library.virginia.edu/organization/etext  Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/  http://www.litgothic.com/index_fl.html A gathering of resources for literary Gothic, including e-texts and web links.  International Gothic Association http://www.iga.stir.ac.uk/index.php
Course Organization
ActivitiesWorkloadECTSIndividualTeamworkErasmus
Lectures117✓✓
Reading Assigment10✓✓
Written assigments20✓✓✓
Exams3
Total150
Student Assessment
Description
Assessment is based on an brief critical essay with bibliography (4,000 words, 40% of the final grade) and on a final examination with a combination of two short essay questions on taught materials (60% of the final grade). The essay is assessed on the basis of organisation, argumentation, quality of expression in English and skills of analysis and synthesis in interpreting the gothic and its social-political-psychoanalytical dimension. The final examination is assessed on the basis of factual knowledge and familiarity with the required readings, in addition to the above criteria. Depending on student numbers each semester, the writing of the essay can be compulsory or optional. In the latter case, students can choose either to take the end-of-semester exam which will cover the entire semester, OR write an MLA-styled research paper of about 4.000 words (40%) and answer only one question in the final exam (60%). Students who opt for the essay should have some experience in the writing of research papers. The topic will be chosen individually by each student after consultation with the instructor. Papers should be handed in at appointed dates during the semester. The intention of the essay scheme is to provide the opportunity for the exercise of research and critical skills to those students who are seriously interested in pursuing this line of academic occupation. The criteria are made known to the students at the beginning of the course.
Student Assessment methods
  • Written Exam with Extended Answer Questions (Formative, Summative)
  • Written Assignment (Formative, Summative)
Bibliography
Course Bibliography (Eudoxus)
1) Three Gothic Novels, ed. Peter Fairclough, intro. Mario Praz. London: Penguin, 1986. [Walpole and Mary Shelley] 2) The Norton Anthology of English Literature, ed. Abrams et al., 9th ed., Vol. 2. [R.L. Stevenson, pp. 1645‒1686]
Additional bibliography for study
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Ambrosini, Richard, ed. Robert Louis Stevenson: Writer of Boundaries. Univ. of Wisconsin P., 2006. Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity and Nineteenth-Century Writing. OUP, 1987. Baldick, Chris, ed. The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales. OUP, 1992. Barron, Neil. Horror Literature: A Reader’s Guide. Garland 1990. Botting, Fred. Gothic. Routledge 2005. Myi Library. Botting, Fred, ed. The Gothic. D.S. Brewer 2001. Botting, Fred. Limits of Horror: Technologies, Bodies, Gothic. Manchester UP, 2008. Clery, E.J. The Rise of Supernatural Fiction. CUP 1995. Cornwell, Neil. The Literary Fantastic: from Gothic to Postmodernism. 1990. DeLammote, Eugenia. Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of 19th Century Gothic. OUP, 1990. Duggett, Tom. Gothic Romanticism: Architecture, Politics and Literary form. Palgrave 2010. Ellis, Markman. The History of Gothic Fiction, Edinburgh University Press, 2001. Ellis, Kate Ferguson. The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology. University of Illinois Press, 1987. Franklin, Caroline, ed. The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse. Pearson Longman, 2011. Gamer, Michael. Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation. CUP, 2000. Haggerty, George. Gothic Fiction/Gothic Form. Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1989. Heiland, Donna. Gothic and Gender: an Introduction. Blackwell, 2004. PR830.T3H37 2004 Hogle, Jerrold E., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. CUP 2002. Hoeveler, Diane Long. Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontes. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Hopkins, Lisa. Screening the Gothic. University of Texas, 2005. Larrissy, Edward, ed. Romanticism and Postmodernism. CUP, 1999. Levine, G.L. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel. University of California Press, 1982. Maxwell, Richard. The Cambridge Companion to Fiction in the Romantic Period. CUP, 2008. Meyers, Helene. Femicidal Fears. Narratives of the Female Gothic Experience. Albany 2001. McCalman, Iain et al. eds. An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. [Reference guide] Mighall, Robert. A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares. Oxford University Press, 2003. Morton, Timothy, ed. A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. London: Routledge, 2002. Mulvey, Roberts Marie. The Handbook to Gothic Literature. Macmillan 1998. Norton, Rictor. Gothic Readings: The First Wave, 1764-1840. Leicester UP, 2000. Punter, David. A Companion to the Gothic. London: Blackwell, 2001. Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic fictions from 1765 to the Present Day. Longman, 1996. Punter, David, and Glennis Byron. The Gothic. Blackwell, 2004. Ref PR830.T3P856 2004 Ricchetti, John, ed. The Cambridge Companion to 18th Century Fiction. Sage, Victor. The Gothic Novel: A Casebook. Macmillan, 1990. Smith, Andrew. Gothic Modernisms. Palgrave, 2001. Smith, Andrew. Gothic Radicalism: Literature, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis in the 19th Century. Macmillan 2000. Schmitt, Cannon. Alien Nation: 19th‒Century Gothic Fictions and English Nationality. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. Spooner, Catherine, ed. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Routledge, 2007. Watt, James. Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict 1764‒1832. CUP, 2006. Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus: the Original Two-Volume Novel of 1816-1817 from the Bodleian Library Manuscripts. Ed. Charles Robinson. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2008. Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995. Wright, Angela. Gothic Fiction. Palgrave 2007.
Last Update
05-11-2021