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This blog is for use by students in Anjuli Raza Kolb's "Legacies of the Gothic Novel" course at Columbia University.
Course Description
The gothic novel is a genre of 18th and 19th century fiction that concerns itself with fear, mystery, the supernatural, violence, purity, otherness, and the impact of these conceits on its largely female protagonists. Much maligned as a popular or 'low' genre at its inception, the form has nevertheless persisted in its popularity as well as crossed into 'higher' forms of modernism and postmodernism. This course will read three key texts in the gothic mode-Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights-and follow the ways they are revisited and rewritten by contemporary American and Caribbean novelists. We will look at how these texts subvert the realist leanings of 18th century narrative prose in English-and its assumptions of enlightenment rationalism-by way of two main processes: narrative hypertrophy and feminist versions of horror. Additionally, we will take up select contemporary criticism on the gothic in literature, film, and art.
There are no prerequisites.
Your response can be whatever you want it to be, a meditation on Shelley's word choice, how you see the sentence relating to themes of the text as a whole, an etymological foray into various shades of meaning, or a thought experiment of your own choosing. I know it can be kind of infuriating to hear, but it's really whatever you want it to be. I'd recommend choosing a sentence or a passage that you find intriguing, but that you don't fully have a handle on. That way your response can aim to "work through" something about the writing.
ReplyDelete“LEIGH GERBER WRITES: "Here, then I retreated, and lay down, happy to have found a shelter, however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more the barbarity of mankind” (84, Shelley). I mean, how stirring is that statement? It seems, at least from the first two volumes of FRANKENSTEIN that Mary Shelley is detailing how someone alien would be not unadoptable to our natural world, but rather repulsed by our social environment. I can imagine that this sentiment of alienation was, in a way, native to the author as well; early 19th century was not an environment that interested itself in the liberation of the female. What is Frankenstein's creation was utterly stunning, as opposed to monstrous? I think the "barbarity" of man would then unfold itself in a different way entirely. Less brutal at first, I think, but maybe the same in its ultimate result? Physicality, according to man, leaves a lasting impression.
ReplyDeletep. 39 "Delighted and surprised, I embraced [Elizabeth]; but as I imprinted the first kiss upon her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.”
ReplyDeleteThis sentence is taken from Frankenstein’s dream immediately after the creature comes to life. That Frankenstein would have such a jarring vision of his dead mother in such close proximity to the success of his efforts to create life reveals an unconscious motivation of Frankenstein’s. His desire to create life from inanimate flesh is really a struggle against death that is sparked by the loss of his mother. The grave-worms that he sees near his mother’s corpse are not unlike the worms he finds while digging up graves to find parts for his creature. Frankenstein’s initial foray into science reveals a similar struggle against death, considering that he first aspires to discover things like the elixir of life.