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The Horror, the Horror

Overview

  • Module Code: AREN118S7
  • Credits/Level: 30 credits, Level 7
  • Tutor: Professor Roger Luckhurst
  • Home MA: MA Modern and Contemporary Literature  
  • Term and Class Times: spring, Wednesdays 7.40-9pm
  • Assessment: 5000-word essay (100%).

Module description

This course offers historical, theoretical and formal ways to think through horror fiction and film. Horror is a distinct genre of writing that emerges from the Gothic tradition. It explores extreme emotional states, terror often collapsing into its opposite: hilarity. We will explore some the dangers and terrors of this very modern genre, starting in the late nineteenth century with some of the foundational texts of the modern genre.

Learning objectives

    • To be able to articulate an understanding of this work formally, theoretically and historically.
    • To grasp the different ways in which the study of popular culture can be culturally significant.
    • To become versed in the theory of popular genre and current academic debates.
    • To be able to grapple successfully with transdimensional squids.

      Recommended reading

      General Reading

      • Ken Gelder, Horror: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2000) - selected samples of criticism, including quite a few of the works mentioned below.
      • Chris Baldick, Gothic Tales (Oxford UP, 1992) - good introduction too.
      • John Clute, The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror (Seattle: Payseur and Schmidt, 2006).
      • Fred Botting, Gothic (Routledge Critical Idiom, 1996) - good ‘theory’ intro.
      • Fred Botting, The Limits of Horror: Technologies, Bodies, Gothic (London: Routledge, 2008).
      • Markman Ellis, The History of Gothic Fiction (Edinburgh UP, 2000) - good on early origins.
      • Andrew Smith, Gothic Literature (Edinburgh UP, 2007) - beginner’s guide.