Gothic Cultures: Literature and Screen - ARTS3048
Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
School: School of the Arts and Media
Course Outline: School of the Arts and Media
Campus: Sydney
Career: Undergraduate
Units of Credit: 6
EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)
Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 3
Enrolment Requirements:
Prerequisite: 48 UOC overall, including 6 UOC at level 1 and 6 UOC at level 2 in one of the following streams, English
CSS Contribution Charge: 1 (more info)
Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule
Further Information: See Class Timetable
View course information for previous years.
Description
Subject Area: English
This course tracks the cultural history of the gothic genre from the sublime landscapes and haunted castles of Horace Walpole to the Southern inspired excesses of Anne Rice. 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 this course’s selected texts, films and TV series, which range from the popular to the canonical, exemplify.