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Undergraduate MAQ-ENGX206-2018

Gothic Visions: From Sublime to Suburban Gothic

Swoop through examples from literature, film and television. Explore themes of desire, fear, identity and sexuality. Lurk alongside Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sherlock Holmes while analysing the themes and aesthetics of the Gothic genre

Study method

100% online

Available loans

HECS-HELP
FEE-HELP

Assessments

100% online

Prior study

Required

This research-intensive university in north-western Sydney offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. With over 30,000 current students, Macquarie has a strong reputation for welcoming international students and embracing flexible and convenient study options, including its partnership with Open Universities Australia.

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Subject details

What you'll learn

The aims of this subject are:

to introduce students to a range of Gothic texts and cultural forms
to develop analytical and research skills that can be applied to past and present cultural and literary debates
to teach students to communicate historical and theoretical concepts via essays and discussions
to develop a greater understanding of the profound impact on contemporary culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural forms
to develop a greater understanding of the historical and often hierarchical deployment of concepts of culture, violence and the criminal, progress, reason and superstition, the imagination, literary and aesthetic value.

Topics covered

- Introduction
- Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto
- Matthew Lewis: The Monk
- Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey
- Edgar Allen Poe: Selected Tales
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Lady Audley's Secret
- Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
- Bram Stoker: Dracula
- Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles
- Daphne du Maurier: Jamaica Inn
- Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep
- Alfred Hitchcock: Psycho
- Final Threads

Entry requirements

You must have successfully completed the following subject(s) before starting this subject:

MAQ-ENGX120-Approaches to English Literature, or MAQ-ENG110 ;

Special requirements

No special requirements

Description

This subject tracks the urban cultural history of the Gothic genre from the sublime landscapes and haunted castles of Ann Radcliffe to the hyper-real suburban universe of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. From its inception the Gothic genre has been a popular and controversial cultural phenomenon, which has dramatised the darker side of the senses and imagination, as well as testing the boundaries of literary taste. In Gothic fiction, nothing is ever certain. The domestic and familiar are merely comforting illusions that veil the darker reality of unspoken fears and desires. Home, city, work, identity, sexuality, the body and the mind are all sites that are open to the destabilising play and uncanny effects of the Gothic imagination, as the selected texts, films and TV series, which range from the popular to the canonical, exemplify.

Assessments

Essay 1 (35%)
Essay 2 (40%)
Participation (10%)
Report (15%)

Textbooks