The Gothic has always been a popular and controversial cultural phenomenon dramatising the darker side of the senses and imagination, as well as testing the boundaries of literary taste. In Gothic fiction, nothing is ever certain. The domestic and familiar are merely comforting illusions that veil a darker reality of unspoken fears and desires. Home, city, work, identity, sexuality, the body and the mind are all sites that are open to the destabilising play and uncanny effects of the Gothic imagination, as the selected texts, which range from the popular to the canonical, exemplify. -- Course Website
Instructor: Dr Lee O'Brien
Prerequisites: ENGL120