The Victorian Gothic

(5 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The Victorian age is the Gothic age. The critic Julian Wolfreys points out that for the Victorians themselves, the Gothic was literally everywhere: 'all that black, all that crepe, all that jet and swirling fog...These and other phenomena, such as the statuary found in Victorian cemeteries like Highgate are discernible as being fragments and manifestations of a haunting, and, equally, haunted, "Gothicized" sensibility'. The period was certainly a particularly fertile time for the production of monsters, and these monsters have refused to go away, with characters like Jekyll and Hyde, Carmilla, and Count Dracula, sustained and constantly reimagined by both high and popular culture, almost becoming mythic figures themselves in the process. This one-semester module will provide an introduction to monstrosity as an important part of Victorian culture. We will examine versions of the monstrous which emerged in the Victorian period in a broad historical and cultural context. Students will be offered a critical introduction to the various ways in which significant theoretical developments have influenced interpretations of the Gothic, and will be encouraged to use and challenge important critical terms and ideas within their own analyses.