ENGL 437 Reading the Gothic: Transatlantic Terrors

3 Credit(s)

This course explores how Gothic stories were invented and developed by the transatlantic imagination in the mid 18th century, and surveys their subsequent development through the 20th century. We will address such questions as why readers would be attracted to obviously “unreal” stories and how these stories test the imagination’s ability to make extreme fictions feel “real.” We will trace the influence of Gothic on other areas of the literary arts, on other artistic fields such as architecture and painting, and even on social developments such as how women were viewed and how other foreign cultures were interpreted. Authors may include Walpole, Brockden Brown, Shelley, Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Dickens, Stoker, Oates, King.

Enrollment Requirements:
Prerequisite: ENGL 200 or 201 or 202