EWL 325 Gothic Fiction
This course introduces students to the modern “Gothic” both as a literary genre and a form of cultural expression. From the haunted castles of Walpole and Radcliffe, to the fog shrouded streets of London, to the urban nightmare of film noir and today’s televisions screens, students will study the British and German roots of gothic horror and terror in the late eighteenth century, and the genre’s development over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe and America. We will explore the persistence of gothic themes, conventions, and sensibilities within literature and culture of the modern era, through select readings by Walpole, Shelley, Hoffmann, Poe, Stoker, Freud, and Hitchcock, among others.