The Gothic

The primary focus of the Gothic is to welcome students into a world of wild and remote landscapes, vulnerable heroines, supernatural happenings and uncanny events. Gothic fiction has intrigued and unsettled readers for more than two centuries and as a result, the Gothic has become a staple of the academic study of literature: the very question of humanity and the human condition, as well as suffering and romance are all key themes brought up and reflected in this dark and mysterious fiction.

It is crucial that rather than just study a range of authors considered ‘Gothic’, that there is dedicated time spent to the development of the genre itself; moving from the introduction of the Gothic,  Romanticism & the Sublime, to the Victorian and American Gothic and the transformation into modern day Gothic symbolism. Students will gain a clear understanding of the critical literary movements and how different writers exploited the fears of the time focusing on Wuthering Heights as the primary novel but using a range of other texts and authors such as the Brontës, Toni Morrison, Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe to present the development of Gothic literature through the centuries.