the uses of the gothic
So I had the interview for the topics in 18th c. lit course this afternoon.
I'm not sure how it went, by which I mean that I was as articulate and enthusiastic as I know how to be, I answered all the interview questions as thoughtfully and persuasively as I could, and the syllabus is fine as far as it goes, but I don't have much sense of whether the committee considers the syllabus appropriate in the first place, and that's a bit of a deal-breaker, isn't it. There was a rather tense moment in which one of the interviewers said point-blank "Isn't this too narrow for an eighteenth century course?" and one of the other interviewers shot the first one a look, smiled at me, and said "Let me put a more positive spin on that: why do you think this would be an appropriate topics course?" I answered as best I could, but it's the sort of question that ultimately they will be answering amongst themselves for reasons of their own.
I was more nervous afterwards than during, which is increasingly common for me. Talking about the syllabus, about teaching, is easy for me: this is what I do, and I do it very well. Afterwards I was shaking so hard I could hardly unlock the door to my office, and I felt rather sick; which is absurd, to have an attack of nerves over the part of the process I can't control, but there it is. I've done what I can and I'll get the course or I won't; and apparently I'll know by the middle of next week. If I don't get it I will be enormously, painfully, curse-and-cry upset, but it's no good assuming crash positions now; I can't lessen the hurt by anticipating it. And I do have some hope that I'll get the gig, native pessimism notwithstanding.
gwynnega asked to hear more about the course, so...
Course Description
The main body of Gothic fiction is generally regarded as having been produced between 1760 and 1820; the form achieved particular popularity and critical acclaim during the 1790s with the work of Ann Radcliffe. Its preoccupations with supernaturalism, violence, incest, anti-Catholicism, the fragmentation of identity and the disintegration of family structures can be examined as a response to the literary and philosophical principles of realism and neoclassicism, a critique of "the failure of religious, scientific, and philosophical systems to create a sense of wholeness and unity in the self and in the world" (W. P. Day, In the Circles of Fear and Desire, p. 10). As perhaps the most widely-read genre of its time, it deserves attention for its ongoing influence on literary and popular fiction-an influence that continues to the present day.
In order to both cover the early or classic Gothic and gesture towards the genre's afterlife in later, more ambigious and/or more complex texts, the course is divided into two parts. The first part covers foundational and representative works by Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis; we will examine their establishment of the Gothic's major conventions of character (the Gothic antihero, the sentimental heroine, the use of doubles), atmosphere (remote geographical and historical settings, fog and darkness, unexplained noises, secret passages), and plot (supernaturalism, imprisonment, rape and incest, transformation and metamorphosis). The second part of the course begins with Austen's satire of the genre and goes on to consider the uses to which the form was being put as early as the 1790s. Godwin turned it to the ends of social and political exposé, an expression of indignation at "things as they are"; Shelley extended the genre's usual critique of the unbounded pursuit of pleasure or power to include presumptuous inquiries into the secrets of nature. The course ends with Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, which uses Gothic conventions to explore race, miscegenation, and the construction of whiteness.
By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with the major conventions and themes of the Gothic and will have practiced the analysis of these conventions in some of the genre's key texts. They will be able to make comparisons and distinctions between the genre's early manifestions and its later developments, including its occasional points of intersection with political and realist fiction. They will understand the Gothic's connections to the earlier prose form of the romance and to eighteenth-century sentimental fiction, and will be prepared to recognize and discuss its later manifestations in the work of major English and American authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Poe, the Brontës, Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, Collins, Wilde, James, Faulkner, Morrison).
Texts
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest (1791)
Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818, written 1798)
William Godwin, Caleb Williams (1794)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
Assignments
Students will have the option of writing either 3 short papers (4-6 pp) or one short paper and one longer one (8-12 pp). In addition to writing these formal papers, students will also be responsible for posting to a class message board once or twice during the semester as a way to prepare for class discussion: each week three or four students will post a paragraph on the week's reading; the other members of the class will read these posts and respond to at least one per week.
Calendar
Week 1: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto. The Gothic (anti)hero; excess, transgression, and supernaturalism; doubling and identity; the sublime and the beautiful.
Weeks 2-4: Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest. The Gothic heroine; sentimentalism, sensibility, and sexuality; family and property; the picturesque.
Weeks 5-6: Matthew Lewis, The Monk. Sensationalism, violence, and rape; incest and the breakdown of the family; the ends of excess. Paper due (week 5).
Weeks 7-8: Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey. Meta-commentary on the Gothic: pleasure, parody, and the uses of reading.
Weeks 9-10: William Godwin, Caleb Williams. Radical politics. Paper due (week 10).
Weeks 11-12: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Science and philosophy.
Weeks 13-15: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! Race, class, and reconstruction in the American South. Paper due (week 15).
I'm not sure how it went, by which I mean that I was as articulate and enthusiastic as I know how to be, I answered all the interview questions as thoughtfully and persuasively as I could, and the syllabus is fine as far as it goes, but I don't have much sense of whether the committee considers the syllabus appropriate in the first place, and that's a bit of a deal-breaker, isn't it. There was a rather tense moment in which one of the interviewers said point-blank "Isn't this too narrow for an eighteenth century course?" and one of the other interviewers shot the first one a look, smiled at me, and said "Let me put a more positive spin on that: why do you think this would be an appropriate topics course?" I answered as best I could, but it's the sort of question that ultimately they will be answering amongst themselves for reasons of their own.
I was more nervous afterwards than during, which is increasingly common for me. Talking about the syllabus, about teaching, is easy for me: this is what I do, and I do it very well. Afterwards I was shaking so hard I could hardly unlock the door to my office, and I felt rather sick; which is absurd, to have an attack of nerves over the part of the process I can't control, but there it is. I've done what I can and I'll get the course or I won't; and apparently I'll know by the middle of next week. If I don't get it I will be enormously, painfully, curse-and-cry upset, but it's no good assuming crash positions now; I can't lessen the hurt by anticipating it. And I do have some hope that I'll get the gig, native pessimism notwithstanding.
gwynnega asked to hear more about the course, so...
Course Description
The main body of Gothic fiction is generally regarded as having been produced between 1760 and 1820; the form achieved particular popularity and critical acclaim during the 1790s with the work of Ann Radcliffe. Its preoccupations with supernaturalism, violence, incest, anti-Catholicism, the fragmentation of identity and the disintegration of family structures can be examined as a response to the literary and philosophical principles of realism and neoclassicism, a critique of "the failure of religious, scientific, and philosophical systems to create a sense of wholeness and unity in the self and in the world" (W. P. Day, In the Circles of Fear and Desire, p. 10). As perhaps the most widely-read genre of its time, it deserves attention for its ongoing influence on literary and popular fiction-an influence that continues to the present day.
In order to both cover the early or classic Gothic and gesture towards the genre's afterlife in later, more ambigious and/or more complex texts, the course is divided into two parts. The first part covers foundational and representative works by Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis; we will examine their establishment of the Gothic's major conventions of character (the Gothic antihero, the sentimental heroine, the use of doubles), atmosphere (remote geographical and historical settings, fog and darkness, unexplained noises, secret passages), and plot (supernaturalism, imprisonment, rape and incest, transformation and metamorphosis). The second part of the course begins with Austen's satire of the genre and goes on to consider the uses to which the form was being put as early as the 1790s. Godwin turned it to the ends of social and political exposé, an expression of indignation at "things as they are"; Shelley extended the genre's usual critique of the unbounded pursuit of pleasure or power to include presumptuous inquiries into the secrets of nature. The course ends with Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, which uses Gothic conventions to explore race, miscegenation, and the construction of whiteness.
By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with the major conventions and themes of the Gothic and will have practiced the analysis of these conventions in some of the genre's key texts. They will be able to make comparisons and distinctions between the genre's early manifestions and its later developments, including its occasional points of intersection with political and realist fiction. They will understand the Gothic's connections to the earlier prose form of the romance and to eighteenth-century sentimental fiction, and will be prepared to recognize and discuss its later manifestations in the work of major English and American authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Poe, the Brontës, Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, Collins, Wilde, James, Faulkner, Morrison).
Texts
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest (1791)
Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818, written 1798)
William Godwin, Caleb Williams (1794)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
Assignments
Students will have the option of writing either 3 short papers (4-6 pp) or one short paper and one longer one (8-12 pp). In addition to writing these formal papers, students will also be responsible for posting to a class message board once or twice during the semester as a way to prepare for class discussion: each week three or four students will post a paragraph on the week's reading; the other members of the class will read these posts and respond to at least one per week.
Calendar
Week 1: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto. The Gothic (anti)hero; excess, transgression, and supernaturalism; doubling and identity; the sublime and the beautiful.
Weeks 2-4: Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest. The Gothic heroine; sentimentalism, sensibility, and sexuality; family and property; the picturesque.
Weeks 5-6: Matthew Lewis, The Monk. Sensationalism, violence, and rape; incest and the breakdown of the family; the ends of excess. Paper due (week 5).
Weeks 7-8: Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey. Meta-commentary on the Gothic: pleasure, parody, and the uses of reading.
Weeks 9-10: William Godwin, Caleb Williams. Radical politics. Paper due (week 10).
Weeks 11-12: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Science and philosophy.
Weeks 13-15: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! Race, class, and reconstruction in the American South. Paper due (week 15).