This is a LECTURE WEEK – see Tabula for time and location.

Research Aims:

1. To discuss and try to get a firm grip on key theories relating to the Short Form and to “the Gothic” as style and “mode” and ascertain the relationship between the two aspects.
2. Using set pre-reading (and any extra reading you did!), we will consider debates over the difference between “Terror” and “Horror” that characterise the works will we examine on the module.
3. Drawing on that, we will then perform close readings of a variety of Gothic works (ballads, folklore, ghost stories, horror tales, fragments) to consider their form and genre.

Preparation:

• Read and annotate the set critical reading detailed below. You should come to class prepared to discuss how different critics – both contemporaneous to our period and more modern – have delineated, separately, what “short” means, what “Gothic” means, and then what is suggested to be the relationship between the two. Feel free to do some wider reading. Recommendations on TalisAspire.
• Read and annotate the set primary reading, detailed below, keeping in mind your discoveries from the critical material.

SET CRITICAL READING (in order of how you should read them):

[Please note that these were all set as summer reading suggestions, so if you read them earlier, do refresh your memory before class].

• Extract from Edgar Allan Poe, "Review of Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne” (1842) [3pp.]
• Tim Killick. “Chapter 1 – Overview”, British Short Fiction in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Rise of the Tale. Taylor and Francis, 2008. [36pp]
• Extracts fromLink opens in a new window Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and from Edward Bulwer Lytton on, ‘Terror and Horror” (1838). [8pp.]
• Fred Botting, “Introduction: Negative AestheticsLink opens in a new window” in Gothic, 2nd edn, Routledge, 2014 [19pp.]
• Extract from Sarah Illot, “Gothic and the Short Story: Revolutions in Form and Genre” in Edinburgh Companion to Gothic and the Arts. ed. David Punter, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp.333-345. [6pp.]
  
  

SET PRIMARY READING

These are available in a collated hard copy in a box opposite my office (FAB 5.26) or as an e-copy here.

1. [Anne Bannerman], “The Perjured Nun” from Tales of Superstition and Chivalry. Vernor and Hood, 1802, pp.39 – 48.
2. “The Dead Devoured by the Living!” The terrific register: or, Record of crimes, judgments, providences, and calamities, vol.2. London: Sherwood, Jones, and co. 1825, pp.737-8.
3. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” The Pioneer: a literary and critical magazine, 1, no.1, Jan 1843, pp. 29-31.
4. [Rhoda Broughton] “The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth”. Temple Bar: a London magazine for town & country readers, vol.22, Feb 1868, pp. 340-8.
5. R L S. “Thrawn Janet”. The Cornhill Magazine; 44: 262, Oct 1881; pp. 436-443.
6. H.G. Wells, “The Sea Raiders”, The Plattner Story and Others. Methuen & co, 1897, pp.126-141. [originally published in The Weekly Sun literary supplement, 12 June 1896]
7. Ambrose Bierce, “The Moonlit Road”, Cosmopolitan, 42:3, Jan 1907, pp.334-9.
8. Katherine Mansfield, “The Woman at the Store”, Art Music Literature Quarterly. Vol. 1, No. 4, 1912, pp.7-21. [interspersed with art pieces]

Research Aims:

To consider two of the different types of short Gothic fiction that were vying for readership in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and which have a close relationship with the kinds of tales we will read in subsequent sessions – the literary Gothic “Fragment” and the Gothic “Tale”. To differentiate between the forms that were used, we will mostly consider the style, content, and processes of adaptation, but also the kinds of readers who accessed them, the kinds of authors who worked with them and the companies/media that published them.

SET CRITICAL READING

• We will be building on the Killick and Ilot chapters set over summer/week 1, so ensure to bring those.
• Douglass H. Thomson and Diane Long Hoeveler. "Shorter Gothic Fictions: Ballads and Chapbooks, Tales and Fragments." Romantic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Angela Wright and Dale Townshend. Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp.147-166.

SET PRIMARY TEXTS

All collated as an e-copy here

FRAGMENTS [c.30pp]

1. “Sir Bertrand” and its imitators:
   a) John and Anna Letitia [Barbauld] Aikin, “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror; with Sir Bertrand, A Fragment” (1773);
   b) Anon., “Edwy: An Ancient Gothic Tale”, in Walker’s Hibernian Magazine (August, 1788), pp. 409-11.
   c) PR, R. "Sir Egbert; A Gothic Fragment." The Ladies' Monthly Museum,4 (1816): 85-88;
   
   
2. Francis Walsh, Junior. “Leonto and Almeria: A Gothic Story”. The General magazine and impartial review; Aug 1789; pp. 342-8.
   
   
3. G. Lewis “Alonzo the Brave, and Fair Imogine” in An Apology for Tales of Terror, ed. Walter Scott (Printed at the Mail office, 1796), pp.58-63.
   
   
4. Lord Byron, “A Fragment” [1816], Mazeppa, John Murray, 1819, pp.59-69.
   
   

EARLY GOTHIC TALES and CHAPBOOKS

1. J. K-wl-y. “The Sybil. A Tale”. The Lady's Magazine; or, Entertaining companion for the fair sex, appropriated solely to their use and amusement.Vol.VI, Jan 1775, pp.20-1. AND Vol. IX, Jan 1778, pp.26-7.
   
   
2. “The Castle of Costanzo” Universal Magazine, vol.75, Aug 1784, pp.74-77.
   
   
3. Sarah Wilkinson, "The Spectre; Or, the Ruins of Belfont Priory." United Kingdom, J. Ker, 1806. pp.7-30.
   
   
4. “The Castle-Goblin, or the Tower of Neuftchaberg”, The London Magazine, Vol. 2; no.9, Sept 1820, pp.247-9.