Penn Arts & Sciences Logo
 

The Gothic (First Year Seminar)

ENGL 0305.301
instructor(s):
MW 10:15-11:44am

This first-year seminar will introduce students to the Gothic, the first literature to achieve mass popularity. Trafficking in ghostly encounters, sexual obsession, and terror, it also was one of the first literatures designed to work on the body — to rack us with suspense, to fill us with dread, to rouse or excite us. The first half of the course will focus on Gothic’s beginnings in England and Europe. We will then allow the interest of the seminar’s participants to guide our work after Spring break, as Gothic jumps from print onto the stage and into film, early exhibitions and theme parks, and digital media. We’ll also confront some enduring questions. What happens to us physically when we engage with works of the imagination? Why does horror resonate in some places and times and not in others? Likely authors for the first weeks of this introductory course are Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Samuel Coleridge, Matthew Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, Ann Radcliffe, and Mary Shelley. We will choose texts for the second half of the course together.

Written work for this introductory seminar will include a close reading exercise, an annotated bibliography, and a final project, which may be research-based or combine research and creative work.

English Major Requirements
  • Literature Seminar pre-1900 (AEB9)
  • Sector 4 Long 18th Century (AE18)
  • Sector 5 19th Century (AE19)
English Concentration Attributes
College Attributes
  • Sector III: Arts & Letters (AUAL)
Additional Attributes