Moodle

Many of the primary texts discussed in this lecture course contain depictions of violence, some of it sexualised.

Since the 1990s, the anglophone Gothic has extended its cultural reach even further. In the age of globalising digital information, the Gothic continues to mutate and negotiate with the cultural discourses, fears and desires of its present. The Gothic has pervaded all areas of cultural production: literature, films, TV-series, music, video games, social media, fashion, journalism, advertising, political discourse, academia and others. 

In this lecture course, we will analyse selected Gothic texts from 1993 to the present. Among the topics to be discussed are: Children’s and Young Adult Gothic, Frankensteins, witches, vampires, mummies, the Neo-Victorian Gothic, the Algorithmic Gothic, gothic poetry, the Scottish Gothic, Black British Gothic and Dark Academia.

On 13 July 2026, there will be a final test (45 mins) in the second half of the last lecture.

Texts: All texts to be read or viewed in preparation for the lectures will be made available.

On 17 January 1775, the premiere of R. B. Sheridan’s first play at the Covent Garden Theatre was a failure. The Rivals was rejected both by the theatre audience and by the critics. Sheridan quickly amended the playscript, and the performance of the revised The Rivals on 28 January 1775 was a success. The play became, like Sheridan’s following plays, a classic comedy of English theatre.

Sheridan’s comedies of the 1770s and 1780s combine brilliant verbal wit with intricate plots. They satirise the affectations, hypocrisies, and moral posturing of polite society. Beneath the entertainment and the bright comic surfaces, these comedies offer a sceptical yet humane critique of darker aspects of eighteenth-century society: language and wit as power tools, reputation and social hypocrisy, love and money, sentimentality vs. sincerity, identity and social masks, the contrast between social appearance and ethical reality. In this seminar, we will contextualise the following plays within eighteenth-century discourses, and we will closely read them (including scenic readings): The Rivals, The School for Scandal (1777) and The Critic (1779).

You must own and bring the edition specified below to every meeting, and you must have read The Rivals by the second meeting on 14 April 2026.

Text: Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The School for Scandal and Other Plays. Ed. Michael Cordner. Oxford University Press, 2008.   ISBN 9780199540099

The Faerie Queene, the magnum opus of Edmund Spenser, is the most important epic poem of the Elizabethan age. Its first three books were published in 1590, and the second three in 1596. Of the planned seventh book, only the two Mutabilitie Cantos are extant. Following its very own logic, The Faerie Queene, written in allegorical mode and consisting of multiple Arthurian plots and characters, is a glorification of Queen Elizabeth I and England and a manifestation of the beauty and power of the English language. In this seminar, we will get to know The Faerie Queene both through some contextualising and through extended close readings.

Text:  Edmund Spenser. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A. C. Hamilton, Hiroshi Yamashita, Toshiyuki Suzuki and Shohachi Fukada. 2nd edition. Longman, 2006.   ISBN 9781405832816

Most primary texts contain depictions of violence, some of it sexualised.

After the Second World War, the Gothic continued to haunt the anglophone world, in literature, films, TV-series, music, fashion and other sites of cultural production. It kept metamorphosing according to the cultural conditions, fears and desires of the times. New forms of the Gothic were created by (and in turn fed into) a heightened interest in the workings of the human psyche as well as political and cultural developments, for instance totalitarianism, consumerism and the cold-war threat of nuclear annihilation.

In this lecture course, we will analyse selected Gothic texts – in literature, but also films and rock/pop songs –  from 1945 to the early 1990s, for instance by David Lean, Mervyn Peake, J. R. R. Tolkien, Terence Fisher, Shirley Jackson, Alfred Hitchcock, Geezer Butler, Ken Russell, Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson, Stephen King, Brian de Palma, Stanley Kubrick, James Herbert, Angela Carter, Ridley Scott, Joyce Carol Oates, Susan Hill, Iain Banks, Toni Morrison, Tim Burton, Robert Smith and Tim Pope, Francis Ford Coppola, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Donna Tartt.

There will be a final test (45 mins) in the second half of the last lecture, which will be held on 2 February 2026.

Texts:

All texts to be read in preparation for the lectures will be made available.