Nineteenth-century literature is full of ghosts, witches, vampires, and other monsters. But what is a monster? And how does it help us understand the cultural moment of its conception? In this class, we will engage with the concept of monstrosity and its development in the nineteenth century. We will discuss Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) as two landmarks of British Gothic fiction whose monstrous protagonists still haunt popular culture and literary criticism today. Drawing on postcolonial studies, feminism, gender and queer theory, and other theoretical approaches, we will construct a framework for analysing the novels within their genre and historical contexts and deal with issues such as race, sexuality, affect, science and religion, and posthumanism.
- Lehrende/r: Svea Türlings