ENGL 377
Legacies of the Gothic Novel: Feminism and Horror in the Transatlantic World
Last Offered Fall 2019
Division I Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ENGL 377 / COMP 377 / WGSS 377
This course is not offered in the current catalog or this is a previous listing for a current course.

Much maligned as a popular or “low” genre at its inception in the late eighteenth century, the gothic form has persisted in its popularity as well as crossed into “higher” forms of modernism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism. In this course, we will read key texts in the gothic mode-Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights among others-and follow the ways in which they are revisited and rewritten by contemporary American and Caribbean writers, filmmakers, and artists. Particularly, we will examine how these texts subvert the realist leanings of Anglo-American narrative fiction and its assumptions of enlightenment rationalism by way of two main processes: narrative hypertrophy and feminist revisions of horror. The class will take up select contemporary criticism on the gothic and horror in literature, film, and art. This course will be of interest to students curious about feminism, postcolonialism, cultural criticism, horror, and comparative literature.