This course investigates nineteenth-century gothic and its preoccupation with violence, history, confession, property, kinship, subjectivities, sexuality, and the aristocracy. It will move chronologically, beginning with Mary Shelley鈥檚 Frankenstein and John Polidori鈥檚 The Vampyre (both conceived during the same heady weekend in the summer of 1816), passing up through Emily Bront毛鈥檚 Wuthering Heights and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu鈥檚 In a Glass Darkly, and culminating with Robert Louis Stevenson鈥檚 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Bram Stoker鈥檚 Dracula.
Readings
Emily Bront毛, Wuthering Heights
John Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre
Edgar Allan Poe, Tales
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly and Other Tales
Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Assessment
1 essay (possibly in-class), a series of unannounced quizzes, class participation, a final exam.