Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- OT-ANG17-390.17
- Title
- Elective Specialisation: The Demons of the Mind: 19th- and 20th-century English and American Horror Fiction
- Usual semester
- Autumn
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- Learning outcomes
- This course aims at improving students’ analytical and critical thinking skills as well as their ability to listen to and understand their peers’ points of view. Another important goal is to expand students’ knowledge of literature and to enable them identify common themes and motifs in the literary works under discussion. In addition, the course also enables students to place specific literary works in context in terms of their historical and sociocultural background.
- Course content
- Throughout the course, students will interpret British and American literary works (poems, short stories, and a novel) as a group and in pairs, with the instructor’s assistance. These literary works either belong in the genre of horror or prominently feature elements or motifs characteristic of literary horror. Horror and the Gothic as subgenres as well as the historical and sociocultural context of the specific pieces will be introduced and discussed as part of the in-class analyses, during which students will also identify common thematic elements and motifs in the works. Students’ previous reading and knowledge acquired during their literary studies will be mobilised. In addition, some filmic adaptations of the literary works under discussion will be viewed and discussed.
- Assessment method
- Requirements: The end-of-term grade consists of 2 tests (40%), 2 in-class essays (40%) and active in-class participation (20%). One test and one in-class essay will be written at mid-term, another test and essay at the end of the term. The tests will cover the study materials (notes and slides) uploaded to Moodle and containing information about the historical and sociocultural context of the specific pieces. The tests will also contain excerpt recognition tasks. The essays will be written based on given titles (there will be several titles to choose from) about a specific literary work discussed in class. The in-class participation score will reflect students’ active involvement in and contribution to pair work and group work as well as their familiarity with the literary texts listed as compulsory literature. Assessment: Test 1: 20p In-class essay 1: 20p Test 2: 20p In-class essay 2: 20p In-class participation: 20p
- Bibliography
- Kötelező irodalom / Compulsory literature: Poems: Keats, John: “This living hand, now warm and capable” Masters, Edgar Lee: “Benjamin Fraser” Plath, Sylvia: “Daddy” Poe, Edgar Allan: “The Raven” Smith, Stevie: “Not Waving but Drowning” Short stories: Carter, Angela: “The Bloody Chamber” Dickens, Charles: “The Signal-Man” Jacobs, William Wymark: “The Monkey’s Paw” James, Montague Rhodes: “The Haunted Dolls’ House” Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan: “Schalken, the Painter” Poe, Edgar Allan: “The Black Cat” Novel: Stoker, Bram: Dracula (Chapters 1-12) Films: Bram Stoker's Dracula. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, performances by Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, and Anthony Hopkins, American Zoetrope, Columbia Pictures, and Osiris Films, 1992. Schalcken the Painter. Directed by Leslie Megahey, performances by Jeremy Clyde, Maurice Denham, and Cheryl Kennedy, BBC, 1979. Recommended literature: Botting, Fred. Gothic. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2014. Botting, Fred, and Dale Townshend, editors. Gothic: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. Routledge, 2004. Corstorphine, Kevin, and Laura R. Kremmel. The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Nevins, Jess. Horror Fiction in the 20th Century: Exploring Literature’s Most Chilling Genre. ABC-CLIO, 2020. Wisker, Gina. Horror Fiction: An Introduction. Continuum, 2005.