---

 

---

 Module convenor: Dr Jen Baker J.Baker.5@warwick.ac.uk 

Value: 30 CATS

Contact Hours:

• 1.5 hour seminars for 17 weeks.
• One 2 hour library-based workshop in week 7 of Term 1
  (it will be an extra 30 mins on the usual slot, but you will need to check for timetable clashes when devising your schedule in Sept)
• 4 lectures - one at the start of each unit - Term 1.2, 1.7, Term 2.1 and 2.7
  (again you need to keep those weeks in mind when devising your timetable).

  ---

Module Description

Engaging with a range of "Tales of Terror" from the Anglophone world/ in English translation c.1770 – 1920, this module will introduce you to the relationship between "the Gothic" (in its various meanings) and "the short form" - from the oral and transcribed folktale; the literary ballad; to the narrative poem, through to illustrated sensation tales and to the high-literary Gothic tale and the non-fiction tales and contexts with which they intersected. You will encounter tales of the supernatural, of psychological uncertainty, that are uncanny, and which sometimes include visceral horror. As well as strengthening your close-reading skills, this module will enable you to critically evaluate a developing form in its material, historical, visual, and transnational context; enhancing your understanding of the literary networks in which Gothic tales participated, were transcribed, circulated, appropriated, received, reviewed, and theorised. Material and print cultures and the modes and effects of changing publication contexts will be a key component throughout. Thinking also about the aesthetics of these works, you will consider why and how the Gothic (whatever that may mean) was a particularly influential mode in the rise of the Short Story.

---

Principal module aims and outcomes

This module will introduce students to the early and growing trend of short Gothic literary tales in the Anglophone world and in English translation, c.1770 – 1920. As well as strengthening their close-reading skills, this module will enable students to critically evaluate a developing form in its material, historical, visual, and transnational context; enhancing their understanding of the literary networks in which Gothic tales participated, were transcribed, circulated, appropriated, received, reviewed, and theorised, and why the Gothic was a particularly influential mode in the rise of the Short Story. Finally, through independent research, students will be able to formulate original analyses of Gothic tales within specific contexts that demonstrate a comprehension of the tale beyond the page.

• Demonstrate an understanding of the socio-religious and/or oral/literary traditions from which many tales derived or were influenced by.
• Describe and explain the formal and stylistic characteristics of selected tales and their adaptations and appropriations produced in the long nineteenth century.
• Demonstrate knowledge of the publication contexts and material forms in which tales were transcribed, circulated, and experienced over the course of the long nineteenth century and how the rise of the anthology reshapes the tales in our own time.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the Gothic as a fashionable and controversial mode through which social anxieties were expressed and through which literary experiments were enacted and theories of literary form were shaped.
• Analyse the Gothic tale’s relationship to notions of nation, gender, and class in terms of authorship and readership.
• Formulate original arguments to do with an aspect of the module based on independent research (to be demonstrated through an essay or creative-critical project).
• Demonstrate the ability to critically reflect on the aims, process, and outcomes of their own research.

---

Assessment overview

The assessments will test your ability to perform comprehensive and thorough examples of some or all of the following: critical Close reading; analysis of genre, form, and style; capacity to understand, judge, compare, and employ different critical approaches; Comparative and close analysis, research, and the formulation of original and informed arguments.

Assessment learning outcomes

• Demonstrate an understanding of the socio-religious and/or oral/literary traditions from which many tales derived or were influenced by.
• Describe and explain the formal and stylistic characteristics of selected tales and their adaptations and appropriations produced in the long nineteenth century.
• Demonstrate knowledge of the publication contexts and material forms in which tales were transcribed, circulated, and experienced over the course of the long nineteenth century and how editorial and marketing practices then and to the present can reshape Gothic effect.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the Gothic as a fashionable and controversial mode through which social anxieties were expressed and through which literary experiments were enacted and theories of literary form were shaped.
• Analyse the Gothic tale’s relationship to notions of national, gendered, and/or class authorship and readership.
• Formulate original arguments to do with an aspect of the module based on independent research (to be demonstrated through an essay or creative-critical project).
• Demonstrate the ability to critically reflect on the aims, process, and outcomes of their own research.

Intermediate Assessment (finalised March 2023):

Portfolio 2500 words in total (25%)
Critical Anthology or Analysis 1200 words (25%)
Independent Research Essay 3000 words (50%)

Finalists Assessment (finalised March 2023) - Will be expected to demonstrate greater research innovation and independent thinking.

Portfolio 2500 words in total (25%)
Critical Anthology or Analysis 1500 words (25%)
Independent Research project 3500 words (50%)

Exchange students with us for the full academic year will adhere to the same assessment methods detailed above according to the module code assigned to them (if unsure, email ugenglish@warwick.ac.uk). Exchange students with us for one term only, will submit a 2,000 word independent research essay on the last Tuesday of the term they complete.

---

Indicative syllabus

This is subject to change and will be formalised in June 2023 along with summer reading recommendations and purchases so ensure to check back. All students listed as potentially taking this module at that point may receive an email with this as well.

Once the moodle is set up in September you will be added to that.

• Week 1: INTRODUCTION TO "GOTHIC" AND "THE SHORT FORM"

In this introductory week we will use short set secondary reading on “the short form” and on “the Gothic” and debates over the difference between “Terror” and “Horror” to tease out the stylistic aspects that characterise the works we will encounter in the module. You will be expected to keep engaging with this reading over the course of the module.

UNIT 1: FOUNDATIONAL FORMS

The first part of this unit will introduce you to some of the key short forms experimented with in the early part of our period (roughly 1780 – 1840) and how debates over the difference between “Terror” and “Horror” influenced the development of the Gothic. These will be placed within a context of the anxieties and critical reception that steered response and publication.

Week 2: Contemporaneous Critics and Theories [LECTURE WEEK]

Week 3: Chapbooks and Bluebooks

Week 4: Gothic Ballads and Fragments

Week 5: Folklore and the Gothic

UNIT 2: DEVELOPMENTS IN FORM, GENRE, PUBLISHING

Week 7: Gothic Publishing – A Library Workshop [This session is 2 hours] this is also a LECTURE WEEK

Week 8: The “Tale”: Framing and Speaking

Week 9: Studies in Genre

Week 10: Winter Tales

[Week 11 – no class, but Portfolio is due]

 

UNIT 3: GOTHIC SELVES AND OTHERS, PLACES AND SPACES

This unit will use short forms from across the whole period we are studying to think about how the Gothic was used to affirm and unsettle changing ideologies of the self (spiritual, physical, as individual, as citizen, as human, as sexualised, gendered, racialised) and the way the Self interacted with and was measured by external and internal spaces.

Week 1: Spirituality, Religion, and the Gothic [LECTURE WEEK]

Week 2: Gothic Nature

Week 3: Haunted Interiors

Week 4: Queering the Gothic

Week 5: The Gothic Body

UNIT 4: COLLECTING, PUBLISHING, EDITING AND CURATING

The final unit will build on some of the earlier work we did on publishing and will place many of the tales we have already studied (and some new works) in their material, cultural, and particularly publishing contexts, thinking about how those stories change, especially in regards to the Gothic effect, when reformed, republished, adapted, moved from the nineteenth-century to the present.

Week 7: Visualising the Gothic [LECTURE WEEK]

Week 8: Editing the Gothic

Week 9: Anthologies and Collections of the long C19th.

Week 10: Anthologies and Collections post 1920.

[Week 11 – no class, but critical piece is due]

EASTER BREAK

[No compulsory classes in Term 3, but Independent Research Project / Essay is due]

---

Indicative Reading List - Will be mainly using TalisAspire

Primary reading will range across Dickens, Poe, Gaskell, Le Fanu, Wilkins Freeman, Riddell and many other unknown writes and source types.

Scott’s An Apology for Tales of Terror (1799); selections from Matthew Lewis Tales of Terror and Wonder.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Philosophy of Composition" Graham's Magazine, 1846
March-Russell, Paul, “Origins: From Folk-Tale to Art Tale” in The Short Story: An Introduction (2009), pp.1-12.
Baker, Jen. "Introduction: Gothic and the Short Form." Gothic Studies 23.2 (2021): 127-131.
Baycroft, Timothy, and David Hopkin. Folklore and nationalism in Europe during the long nineteenth century. Brill, 2012.
Belsey, Catherine. "Shakespeare's Sad Tale for Winter: Hamlet and the Tradition of Fireside Ghost Stories." Shakespeare Quarterly 61.1 (2010): 1-27.
Brake, Laurel. "Star Turn? Magazine, Part-Issue, and Book Serialisation." Print in Transition, 1850–1910. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2001. 27-51.
Boratti, Vijayakumar M. "Folklore and the Civilizing Gaze of Modernity: An Indian Folklorist in Colonial Karnataka." Folklore 130.3 (2019): 300-310.
Boud, Holly Young. Blackwood's to Hawthorne in Light of Its Mid-nineteenth Century Transatlantic Reputation. Brigham Young University, 2018.
Bourke, Angela. "Reading a woman's death: colonial text and oral tradition in nineteenth-century Ireland." Feminist Studies 21.3 (1995): 553-586.
Blackburn, Stuart H. Print, folklore, and nationalism in colonial South India. Orient Blackswan, 2006.
Blair, David, ed. Gothic short stories. Wordsworth Editions, 2002.
Brown, Clarence E. "The Gothic Short Story in American Periodicals from 1800-1850 with Especial Reference to the Lady Books." (1949).
Dalmia, Vasudha. "Vernacular histories in late nineteenth-century Banaras: Folklore, Purānas and the new antiquarianism." The Indian Economic & Social History Review 38.1 (2001): 59-79.
Darnell, Regna. "American anthropology and the development of Folklore scholarship: 1890-1920." Journal of the Folklore Institute 10.1/2 (1973): 23-39.
Dorson, Richard M. "The shaping of folklore traditions in the United States." Folklore 78.3 (1967): 161-183.
Edmundson, Melissa. "The ‘Uncomfortable Houses’ of Charlotte Riddell and Margaret Oliphant." Gothic studies 12.1 (2010): 51-67.
Edmundson, Melissa. Women’s Colonial Gothic Writing, 1850-1930: Haunted Empire. Springer, 2018.
Garrett, Peter K. Gothic reflections: Narrative force in nineteenth-century fiction. Cornell University Press, 2003.
Golightly, Karen B. Who put the folk in folklore?: Nineteenth-century collecting of Irish folklore from T. Crofton Croker to Lady Augusta Gregory. Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale, 2007.
Grove, Allen W. "To make a long story short: Gothic fragments and the gender politics of incompleteness." Studies in Short Fiction 34.1 (1997): 1-11;
Handley, Sasha. Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost beliefs and ghost stories in eighteenth century England. Routledge, 2015.
Hart, Carina. "Gothic Folklore and Fairy Tale: Negative Nostalgia." Gothic Studies 22.1 (2020): 1-13.
Harris, Jason Marc. Folklore and the fantastic in nineteenth-century British fiction. Routledge, 2016.
Harris, Katherine D. The Forgotten Gothic: Short Stories from the British Literary Annuals, 1823-1831. Zittaw Press, 2012.
Hutton, Ronald. "The English reformation and the evidence of folklore." Past & Present 148 (1995): 89-116.
Jackson, Bruce. The Negro and his folklore in nineteenth-century periodicals. No. 18. University of Texas Press, 1967.
James, Montague Rhodes. "Twelve Medieval Ghost-Stories." The English Historical Review 37.147 (1922): 413-422.
Joynes, Andrew, ed. Medieval ghost stories: An anthology of miracles, marvels and prodigies. Boydell & Brewer, 2006.
Kędra-Kardela, Anna. "Between a Fragment and a Whole. A Cognitive Analysis of the Gothic Fragment as a Literary Genre. A Case Study of Anna Letitia Aikin’s ‘Sir Bertrand: A Fragment.’." Crossroads in Literature and Culture. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013. 341-350.
Killick, Tim. British short fiction in the early nineteenth century: the rise of the tale. Routledge, 2016.
Mayo, Robert D. "The Gothic short story in the magazines." The Modern Language Review (1942): 448-454.
McDowell, Stacey. "Folklore." The encyclopedia of the Gothic (2012).
Mills, Kirstin A. "Haunted by ‘Lenore’: The Fragment as Gothic Form, Creative Practice and Textual Evolution." Gothic Studies 23.2 (2021): 132-147.
Naithani, Sadhana. "An axis jump: British colonialism in the oral folk narratives of Nineteenth-Century India." Folklore 112.2 (2001): 183-188.
Naithani, Sadhana. "The colonizer-folklorist." Journal of folklore research (1997): 1-14.
Naithani, Sadhana, Luisa Del Giudice, and Gerald Porter. "Prefaced Space: Tales of the Colonial British Collectors of Indian Folklore." Imagined States:
Nationalism, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures (2001): 64-79.
Newton, Michael. "Haunted Hotels and Murder Inns: Travelers’ Tales from Europe and the Gothic Short Story from the 1820s to the 1940s." Haunted Europe. Routledge, 2019. 88-106.
Noonan, Mark. "Literary Experiments in Magazine Publishing: Beyond Serialisation by Thomas Vranken." American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism 31.2 (2021): 160-163.
Pitcher, Edward W. "Eighteenth-century Gothic fragments and the paradigm of violation and repair." Studies in Short Fiction 33.1 (1996): 35.
Reyes, Xavier Aldana. "From the 1860s to the Fin-de-Siècle: The Development of the Gothic Short Story." Spanish Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017. 109-132.
Ruppert, Timothy. "Romantic Vision and Gothic Balladry: Anne Bannerman's Tales of Superstition and Chivalry." Literature Compass 10.10 (2013): 783-796.
Savonius-Wroth, Celestina. "" In the Village Circle": Washington Irving and Transatlantic Folk Revivals." Western Folklore 79 (2020).
Senf, Carol A. The Vampire in Nineteenth Century English Literature. University of Wisconsin Pres, 2013.
Scott, Sir Walter ‘Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad.’ Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1902), pp. 1-58.
Spector, Robert D. "The Gothic." Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism. Routledge, 2002. 1064-1074.
Thomas, Sophie. "The Return of the Fragment:" Christabel" and the Uncanny." Bucknell Review 45.2 (2002): 51.
Vuohelainen, Minna. "Traveller's Tales: Rudyard Kipling's Gothic Short Fiction." Gothic Studies 23.2 (2021): 181-200.
Wallace, Diana. "Uncanny Stories: The Ghost Story as Female Gothic." Gothic Studies 6.1 (2004): 57-68.
Wynne, Deborah. "Charlotte Brontë’s Gothic Fragment:‘The Story of Willie Ellin’." Victoriographies 11.1 (2021): 20-37.