The unit is designed to introduce students to a range of eighteenth-century English texts that employ and explore irrationality, emotionalism and the supernatural. The unit considers why and how an era that championed Enlightenment values (such as skepticism, rationality and restraint) also gave rise to gothic, horror and supernatural literature, a literature of unrestrained emotionalism, morbid and fantastic speculation, and irrational themes. Special attention will be given to aspects of the emerging print culture that made the rise of the irrational possible in the Age of Reason and which enabled the cultural conflicts of the Enlightenment to be articulated via a flood of prose and... -- Course Website
Instructor: Dr Patrick Spedding
Prerequisites: A first-year sequence in Literary Studies, English or Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies and 12 points of second-year units in these areas
