Dr Yih-Dau Wu
ydw20@nccu.edu.tw
Office: Research Building 919
Telephone: (02)2939-3091#88181
British Fiction and
Course description:
This course examines the development of Gothic fiction from the mid 18th-century to the
early Victorian period. The eight decades separating Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto
(1764) and Charlotte Brontё’s Jane Eyre (1847) witnesses a proliferation of novels with
strong Gothic character. Together they consolidate and complicate the meaning of the Gothic.
We will explore the political, moral, literary, psychological and domestic implications of
Gothic imagination in five classic British novels.
Course objectives:
Students are trained in the skills of close reading. They will also learn how to use historical
sources and secondary criticism intelligently. The final goal is to produce a well-organised
and original research paper.
Requirements and regular in-class activities:
1. Finish reading the required novel and/or critical essays before coming to class.
2. Make presentations and lead discussion (i.e. prepare 1~2 important questions, respond to
your classmates’ answer and offer your own)
3. Our class will regularly begin with student presentations on assigned materials. Discussion
and passage analysis will follow. Participate in in-class discussion vigorously.
4. Make an appointment with the instructor if necessary.
5. At the end of the term, students are required to produce a research paper (6000-8000
words in MLA style).
Grading policies:
Weekly contributions 10%
Final term paper 90%
Schedule:
Week 1 (15th Sept.)
Introduction:
‘Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination’ by Dale
Townshend
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Week 3 (29th Sept.)
‘Gothic Enlightenment/ Enlightenment Gothic’ by Carol
Davison
‘Gothic fiction [in the Romantic period]’ by Deidre Lynch
Week 4 (6th Oct.)
The Castle of Otranto
Week 5 (13th Oct.)
The Castle of Otranto; ‘Sexual Violence and Woman’s
Place: The Castle of Otranto’ by Valdine Clemens
The Castle of Otranto; ‘Frenzy: The Castle of Otranto’ by
Elizabeth Napier
The Monk
The Monk; ‘Public Censorship and Personal Repression:
The Monk’ by Clemens
The Monk; ‘Social Hierarchy in Matthew Lewis’s The
Monk’ by Daniel Watkins
Week 2 (22nd Sept.)
Week 6 (20th Oct.)
Week 7 ( 27th Oct.)
Week 8 (3rd Nov.)
Week 9 (10th Nov.)
Week 10 (17th Nov.)
Week 11(24th Nov.)
Week 12(1st Dec.)
The Italian
The Italian; ‘Villainy: The Italian’ by Napier
The Italian; ‘Sensibility Restored’ by Sydney Conger
Week 13(8th Dec.)
Week 14 (15th Dec.)
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; ‘Frankenstein and the Unnameable’ by
George Haggerty
Week 15 (22nd Dec.)
Frankenstein; ‘Frankenstein’s Queer Gothic’ by Mair
Rigby
Week 16 (29th Dec.)
Week 17 (5th Jan.)
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre; ‘Charlotte Brontë’s New Gothic’ by Robert
Heilman
Jane Eyre; ‘Gothic Romance and Women’s Reality in Jane
Eyre’ by Eugenia DeLamotte; Term paper due.
Week 18 (12th Jan.)
Bibliography
Botting, Fred. Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996.
Clery, E. J. The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1995.
---. Women’s Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. Tavistock: Northcote
House, 2000.
Duncan, Ian. Modern Romance and the Transformation of the Novel: The Gothic,
Scott, Dickens. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.
Ellis, Markman. The History of Gothic Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000.
Gamer, Michael. Romanticism and the Gothic. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.
Howard, Jacqueline. Reading Gothic Fiction: A Bakhtinian Approach. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994.
Kilgour, Maggie. The Rise of the Gothic Novel. London: Routledge, 1995.
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Mighall, Robert. A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s
Nightmares. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.
Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to
the Present. London: Longman, 1980.
Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. Ed. E. J. Clery. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.
Watt, James. Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict 1764-1832.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
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