American Gothic

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• produce historically informed analyses of texts
• produce close readings of a range of nineteenth-century literary texts
• think critically about literary texts
• use internet resources effectively as part of historical research
• analyse the relationship between literary texts and historical documents

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• share your research findings confidently

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• A range of critical approaches to nineteenth-century American gothic writing.
• Forms of writing specific to and associated with gothic literature in America in the nineteenth century.
• The cultural and historical origins of American gothic literature.

This module asks why a nation devoted to rationalism, democracy and progress was so deeply obsessed in the nineteenth century with the macabre, the monstrous, the repressed and the violent. As such it offers a way of both extending and expanding upon existing knowledge of the European gothic as a literary genre and of examining the character of the American psyche as it developed. You will read both celebrated practitioners of American Gothic (such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James) alongside lesser-known authors including Charles Chesnutt and William Wells Brown. Throughout, we will consider the role of America’s relationship to gender and race (including indigeneity and slavery). A sampling of indicative themes and associated authors and texts may include:

• The Frontier and the Natural World: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (1852)
• Urban Gothic: Herman Melville, ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’ (1853)
• Rationalism and Its Discontents: Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Black Cat’ (1845), ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ (1846), and ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’ (1845); Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
• Southern Gothic: Charles Chesnutt, ‘The Dumb Witness’ (ca. 1901) and ‘The Sheriff’s Children’ (1899)

• Teaching methods will include:
• lectures and seminars.

Learning methods will include:

• group work

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.