106-043 'The Victorian Supernatural'

Note

Availability

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 25 points of first year English, see Prerequisites

Semester

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Subject Description

This subject provides an introduction to the discourse of the supernatural in Victorian aesthetic, political and scientific discourse. Students who undertake this subject will read well known literary texts, ghost stories, sensation and science fiction and visual images from this period in the context of Victorian anxieties about sexual transgression, madness, race, disease, the death of god and the degeneration of European culture. Central to this subject is the consideration of the ways in which contemporary theorisations of the body, gender, race and modes of cultural production can help us understand the preoccupations of Victorians, with ghosts, spiritual forces, seances, telepathy, parapsychology and life in other worlds.

Assessment

Written work totalling 4000 words.

Prescribed Texts

• W Collins, The Woman in White.
• M Cox & R A Gilbert, Victorian Ghost Stories.
• G Eliot, The Lifted Veil.
• R L Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories.
• H James, The Turn of the Screw.
• E A Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher.
• O Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray.