Gender, Law, and the Gothic

Course Number: English 250.301.
Professor: Michael Gamer
Office and Phone: 203 Bennett Hall, (215) 898-7346
Office Hours: Wed. 10-11, 12-1, and by appt.
WATU Tutor: Erik Simpson
Erik Simpson's Office and Phone:
Erik Simpson's Office Hours:




TEXTS: Available at Penn Book Center, 3726 Walnut, ph:222-7600.
  • A Guide to the New MLA Documentation Style. Ed. J. Trimmer. (NY: Houghton Mifflin).
  • Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (composed 1798; published 1818; Oxford). ISBN#0451518349.
  • Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1758; Oxford)
  • Ellen Fein and Sherry Schneider, The Rules (Warner Books, 1995).
  • Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume One
  • Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
  • John Keats, Selected Poems (Everyman, ISBN#0460874594).
  • Thomas Lacqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (1990)
  • Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796; Oxford). ISBN#0192815245.
  • Ann Radcliffe, The Italian (1797)
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria. (1798; Norton ISBN#0393311694).
  • Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto with Hieroglyphic Tales (1764 and 1785; Everyman).




    BULKPACK: Available at Wharton Reprographics, Basement of Wharton School
  • Anna Letitia Aikin (later Barbauld) and John Aikin, "On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror, With Sir Bertrand, A Fragment" from Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse (1773).
  • Katherine Binhammer, "The Sex Panic of the 1790s"
  • Edmund Burke, "On Taste" (1759). and selections from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (2nd edition, 1759).
  • Marilyn Butler, "The Juvenalia and Northanger Abbey" in Jane Austen the War of Ideas (1975).
  • Anna Clark, "Women's Pain, Men's Pleasure: Rape in the Late Eighteenth Century," from Women's Silence, Men's Violence: Sexual Assault in England, 1770-1845. London: Pandora, 1987.
  • Jan Fergus, "Eighteenth-Century Readers in Provincial England: The Customers of Samuel Clay's Circulating Library and Bookshop in Warwick 1770-72
  • Peter Gay, "The Enlightenment in Its World" from The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (Norton, 1966).
  • Enid G. Hildebrand, "Jane Austen and the Law"
  • David Hume, "Of Tragedy."
  • Edward Jacobs, "Anonymous Signatures: Circulating Libraries, Conventionality, and the Production of Gothic Romances."
  • Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?"
  • David Punter, "Introduction" to The Literature of Terror (1980).
  • Eve Sedgwick, "The Character in the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic Novel."
  • Eve Sedgwick, "Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Homosexual Panic"
  • Laurence Stone, "Sex, Money, and Murder in Eighteenth-Century England."
  • Karen Swann, "'Christabel': The Wandering Mother and the Enigma of Form"
  • James G. Turner, "The Properties of Libertinism."
  • Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957; selections).
  • Anne Williams, "Introduction" to Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (1994)
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, Preface to the Female Reader (1789).




    COURSE DESCRIPTION:

    From the vehemence of current debates concerning the relation of representations of sex and violence on TV to actual sexual and violent acts committed in American society, one would think that such issues were new and peculiar to America. In fact, similar debates were taking place as far back as the 18th C in England and Europe. Just as one specific court-TV trial has occupied center stage in the American media for the past several years only to be supplanted now by yet another, so also were late-18th and early-19th century British readers obsesseed with the potent intersection of sex, violence, and law that they found in gothic romances of the time. Because gothic explores what lies beyond Enlightenment attitudes toward reason, literacy, superstition, sensuality, crime, punishment, tyranny, marriage, social class, and nationhood, it provides writers of this period with a means of pushing the boundaries of what is known and what can be known. It asks whether we can separate pain from pleasure, sex from violence, justice from corruption, punishment from tyranny. This course explores the craze for gothic fiction in England during the RomanticPeriod. We will certainly read Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Radcliffe's The Italian, Austen's Northanger Abbey, Lewis's The Monk, Dacre's Zofloya, Baillie's Orra, Coleridge's Christabel, Maturin's Bertram, and Percy Shelley's Cenci. Graded work will be consist of a short paper, a longer paper, an annotated bibliography, and a final exam. Students will also be required to acquire and use elctronic computer mail accounts.




    COURSE CALENDAR

    Note: The first two instigator paragraphs are due before Fall Break. The second two are due before Thanksgiving.

    Sept 3: Opening day, introduction to course.

    Sept 5: Please do the following things, which will get you centered for the course: (i) send me an e-mail message so that I know you have an e-mail account and that you are in the class; (ii) read the opening "Glossary of Aesthetic Terms" at the beginning of the coursepack; (iii) read Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (selections in coursepack); read Chapter 3 of E. J. Clery's The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762-1800, which is entitled "The Uses of History" (I will give this material to you on Sept. 3); read the introductory material in the Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto. This means that you should read the Robert Mack introduction, and the two introductions written by Walpole. I've also included in the bulkpack an excellent introductory essay on Walpole, which you should examine if only for the pictures and to see what else Walpole wrote during his life. In class, we will concentrate on the Watt, the Clery, and Walpole's second introduction. ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE FOR WATT.

    Sept 8-10: Read Chapters 2 and 5 from Thomas Lacqueur, Making Sex. Read Edmund Burke, "On Taste" and A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful (1758): Part I, Sections II, VI-XV; Part II, Sections I-VIII, and Part III, Sections I-XVIII. On Monday, we will focus on ideas of sexual difference as they work in first 40 pages of Castle of Otranto in comparison to Burke's highly gendered notions of the sublime and the beautiful. Questions for Monday: if you set up two columns, and in one note all that is sublime in the first half of Walpole, and in the other note all that is beautiful in Walpole, are they as cleanly gendered as Burke makes them? Do these columns confirm or contradict Lacqueur's claims in Making Sex about the Eighteenth Century's "discovery" of sexual difference? On Wednesday, we will look at "On Taste" and at how emotion and sympathy work in the first 40 pages of Walpole and especially in Walpole's Dedicatory Sonnet. Questions for Wednesday: How do emotion and sympathy work in this novel? Is emotion a subversive force in this novel or the opposite? Or both?

    Sept 12: Read Peter Gay, "The Enlightenment in Its World" (selections in coursepack) and Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (1784, in coursepack). In class:we will focus on how emotion--particularly fear--operates in this novel. Question: Based on how Manfred attempts to manipulate sex and sexual desire in this novel, would you interpret Walpole as sympathetic or hostile to the Enlightenment?

    Sept 15: Read the first seven chapters of The Italian. As this is a complex novel, I've supplied you with a plot summary of The Italian (in coursepack). ALSO: Read the article by Eve Sedgwick, "The Character in the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic Novel." ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE

    Sept 17: Read to Volume Two, Chapter Two of The Italian. Read Michel Foucault, "Panopticism" (in Discipline and Punish). Question: How does the architecture of San Stefano express power?

    Sept 19: Landscape and The Italian. Read: Chapter 6 and Chapter 8 of E. J. Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction. Look again at Burke's Philosophical Enquiry (selections above). Question: What is the relation between Burke's theories of the sublime and Foucault's analysis on the Panopticon? Why then does Ellena derive so much relief and pleasure from the sublime when at San Stefano?

    Sept 22: Read through the end of Volume II of The Italian. Read the first three parts of Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (through the chapter Scientia Sexualis). Question: Why is Schedoni called "The Confessor"? What light does Foucault shed on the relation between confession, the inquisition, penance, and sadomasochism?

    Sept 24: Continue The Italian. You will find Chapters 6-8 (only about 35 pages) of E. J. Clery's The Rise of Supernatural Fiction extremely useful here. We will work from the response questions, and from your own questions.

    Sept 26: Finish The Italian.

    Sept 29: Begin The Monk; finish the first Volume One. Read Eve Sedgwick, "Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Homosexual Panic." Question: Using Paulo-Vivaldi as a segue, go to Matilda-Ambrosio: how does power work in their relationship? What are the vague moments?

    Oct 1: Read the next two chapters--to Volume Two, Chapter Three (through Raymond's interlude).

    Oct 3: Finish Volume II of The Monk. Read Chapter 6 of Thomas Lacqueur, Making Sex. ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE.

    Oct 6: Finish The Monk. Read Chapter 9 of E. J. Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction.

    Oct 8: Read select reviews of The Monk (in coursepack), and Coleridge's reviews of The Monk and The Italian (in coursepack). For Discussion: Samuel Coleridge, Christabel (first book).

    Oct 10: Finish Christabel. Read Karen Swann, "'Christabel': The Wandering Mother and the Enigma of Form." >Essay #1 Due.

    Oct 13: FALL BREAK

    Oct 15: Interlude #1: Who read? Reread the selections from Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel (1957) from the first day of class, and read the following three articles and/or book chapters: Chapter 5 of E. J. Clery's The Rise of Supernatural Fiction; Jan Fergus, "Eighteenth-Century Readers in Provincial England: The Customers of Samuel Clay's Circulating Library and Bookshop in Warwick 1770-72," and Edward Jacobs, "Anonymous Signatures: Circulating Libraries, Conventionality, and the Production of Gothic Romances."

    Oct 17: Interlude #2: Why did they read? Read Anna Letitia Barbauld, "On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror, With Sir Bertrand, A Fragment"; David Hume, "Of Tragedy."; Edmund Burke "On Tragedy" (Part I, Section XIV of A Philosophical Enquiry); and Joanna Baillie "Introductory Discourse" (selections in coursepack).

    Oct 20: Interlude #3: How have we viewed them? Read David Punter, "Introduction" and "Origins of Gothic Fiction" in The Literature of Terror (1980), and Anne Williams, "Introduction" to Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (1994).

    Oct 22: Romances and Anti-Romances. Begin Northanger Abbey (first three chapters). Read Mary Wollstonecraft, Preface to the Female Reader (1789).

    Oct 24: Finish Volume One of Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (through Chapter 15). Read Marilyn Butler, "The Juvenalia and Northanger Abbey" in Jane Austen the War of Ideas (1975). Essay #2 Due.

    Oct 27: Austen and Conduct Literature. Read John Gregory, A Father's Legacy to His Daughters (selections).

    Oct 29: Continue Northanger Abbey. Read Anna Clark, "Women's Pain, Men's Pleasure: Rape in the Late Eighteenth Century,". Read Enid G. Hildebrand, "Jane Austen and the Law".

    Oct 31: Finish Northanger Abbey. Read Lawrence Stone, "Sex, Money, and Murder in Eighteenth-Century England."

    Nov 3: Begin Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman. Question: Why does Wollstonecraft open by referring to Gothic?

    Nov 5: Continue The Wrongs of Woman. Read Katherine Binhammer, "The Sex Panic of the 1790s." ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE.

    Nov 7: The Wrongs of Woman. Read James Grantham Turner, "The Properties of Libertinism." ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE

    Nov 10: Read The Rules. Question: Is The Wrongs of Woman a conduct book? In what way?

    Nov 12: Finish The Wrongs of Woman. The question of the endings.

    Nov 14: Read Joanna Baillie, Orra.

    Nov 17: Finish Orra.

    Nov 19: Read Acts 1-2 of Percy Shelley, The Cenci.

    Nov 21: Read Acts 3-4 of Percy Shelley, The Cenci.

    Nov 24: Finish Percy Shelley, The Cenci.

    Nov 26: Long Essay Due.

    Nov 27: Thanksgiving.

    Dec 1: Read John Keats, Isabella, or The Pot of Basil.

    Dec 3: Finish Isabella, or The Pot of Basil. Begin John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes.

    Dec 5: Finish The Eve of St. Agnes. Read as well John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci."

    Dec 8: Last day of class.

    PORTFOLIO DUE DECEMBER 12TH AT 4:00 PM AT MY OFFICE.




    COMPUTER INFORMATION:

    You are required to have an electronic mail account: I do not require you to use the world wide web, or any of the internet, but an electronic mail account--and checking it at least a couple of times a week--is required. Until you send an electronic mail message to me, I will not consider you registered for the class, and I will drop those of you on the course lists who do not get electronic mail accounts. I do this because I will use electronic mail as my chief way of making course announcements, sending out reminders, and communicating with you.

    Also, this course will have an electronic mailing list (known as a listserver) that will have all of our names on it. If you send a message to gamer250@dept.english.upenn.edu, your message will go to everyone in the class. This way, you will be able to do many things: 1) conduct discussions outside of class, 2) ask for information on what we did in class if you miss a meeting, 3) test paper ideas out on each other, 4) brainstorm regarding the final exam, etc. On the first day of class, I will, as part of our first assignment, get those of you who know about e-mail to take twenty minutes to teach those of you who don't know about e-mail how to use it. Michael and I are more than willing to set up group appointments with you in order to teach you how to use this technology--so if you feel lost, you simply need to say so.






    COURSE REQUIREMENTS


    Attendance: As this is a 50-minute class, please show up on time or even early. Regarding Absences: since I know that disasters happen unexpectedly during the semester, I allow you three absences. Therefore, please do NOT explain to me why you miss class unless it involves a major illness that you can document. Since there's no such thing in this class as an "excused" absence, I don't want to know why you miss class; these two absences are your business. Missing more than two classes is equally your business, but it will significantly lower your grade, since it will inhibit your ability to contribute significantly to our discussions. You should count on 3-4 absences lowering your grade by 1/3 (B to B-, for example), 5-6 by 2/3 (B to C+), 7-8 by one full grade (B to C), etc. More than 10 will constitute failing the course.

    Participation: This class will conduct itself as a discussion rather than a lecture. I say this now because I do not want anyone taking this class to expect it to be a lecture class. I do sometimes lecture for 5-15 minute stretches, but the bulk of our time will be spent in real discussion, and the topics of our discussion will be determined as much by your intellectual interests as by my own. This means that you should expect class periods to be intense and often fun--a place to test out your own ideas about what we're reading. You can expect me to come in every class with 50 minutes of my own agenda planned; in turn, I will expect the 25 of you to have at least 25 minutes of questions, observations, and discoveries about the reading. Students who do not participate in our discussions will most likely see their final grade go down; the four or five students who end up carrying much of the burden of discussion will probably see their hard work reflected in their grade as well.

    IF YOU ARE SHY, HERE'S WHAT TO DO: Simply bring in one question that you want to ask the rest of us AND ASK IT--and you should, when possible, choose interpretive questions ("I don't understand how these two passages can be part of the same poem") rather than factual questions ("When did Robinson write this?") In particular, I urge you to pay special attention to those points where you don't understand something in the reading--where you've tried to find out the answer for yourself and failed--because they are the most important for the class.

    Reading and Writing Assignments: As this course is a lower-level, introductory course, I am assuming that you have little or no experience in reading poetry. Consequently, the reading load for this course is relatively light (usually under 6 hours per week), and the writing load for this course is relatively heavy (several one-paragraph article summaries, four short one-paragraph discussion "instigators," five listserv responses, two short essays, and a longer essay with an annotated bibliography attached to it). Instructions concerning all of these assignments are below.




    GRADED WORK FOR THIS COURSE:

    Your grade will be determined by three components: the quality of your in-class performance (including the article summaries, the paragraphs, and the listserver responses, 25% of your grade), your performance on the final exam 25% of your grade), and the quality of the portfolio of work that you hand in at the end of the semester (50% of grade). These various assignments are listed and described below:





    Late Work and Extensions:

    During the semester, I DO NOT ACCEPT LATE WORK. If you do not make a deadline, it does not directly affect your grade; you simply lose that opportunity for me to read your work and provide you with feedback. For example, if you miss the second paper deadline, you simply lose that opportunity for me to read your work and help you with feedback. I do this because I do not want anything to do with the hassles of students asking for extensions, bringing excuses, etc. I will only read each paper you write once before the portfolio. However, I am happy to discuss work in progress with you during my office hours or by appointment; and will be very happy to talk with you about an essay that I've commented upon. It is a good idea to bring in a draft with specific questions about it. It is much more instructive to discuss specific questions and writing problems in a draft than general, abstract questions concerning your writing.

    Plagiarism: I will report all instances of Plagiarism to the Office of Student Conduct. If you have any doubts over whether you're plagiarizing from something, please come see me or the course's WATU Tutor.