This could be called (story)world Gothic. Gothic narratives and effects in various genres since the eighteenth century have developed a kind of international repertoire especially resonant with sights, sounds, and affects that expose vulnerable bodies (gender, sexuality, race, ability) and power according to controlled spaces. Tensions over authority, property, and nationhood; confinement, invasion or disintegration play out in the various works we study. A wilderness, a mountaintop or “sea of ice,” a haunted house or ruined abbey, an ancestral secret, an escape, a hunt, a pilgrimage—orientations to story-worlds—have taken different forms in literature in different times and countries. Although centered in nineteenth-century British and North American literature, the course includes a range of periods and forms. We will assume that students are familiar with Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre (read them if you never have). This course can be taken as an elective in the DH Certificate.
