ENL 5246 Spring 2023 Pascoe

We will explore the key role the haunted house has played in the literary imagination, moving backward in time from the works of late-twentieth century novelists to those of Romantic-era innovators. In the late eighteenth century, Gothic novels’ repetitive tropes—haunted castles, winding hallways, claustrophobic chambers—were ridiculed by critics, even as they were embraced by readers. A vast body of theory and criticism (Structuralist, Psychoanalytic, Feminist, Postcolonial, Queer) has since enriched our understanding of how Gothic literary works grapple with cultural and political disturbances. We will pleasurably read and discuss haunted house-inspired literary works (mostly novels, but also poetry and autobiography) for what they can teach us about their cultural moments and about the mechanics of novel and poetry writing. Students with varied scholarly and creative investments and ambitions are welcome.

Tentative Reading list:
Mariko Koike, The Graveyard Apartment (1993)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (1980)
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Daphne DuMaurier, “The Birds” (1952)
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Charlotte Riddell, The Uninhabited House (1883)
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (1819)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel” (1800)
Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1817)