Readership and Historical Context

Gothic Literature

In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores the history of the Gothic novel, beginning with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, and finishing with the literature (and films) of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that have been influenced by the Gothic, including Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Angela Carter’s A Bloody Chamber. Along the way, we will explore some of the most important novels in the English language, including: Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, and the Picture of Dorian Gray.

Readership and Historical Context

In this module, we think about the origins of the word ‘gothic’ itself, the original readership for the earliest gothic novels, and what is was about eighteenth-century England that gave rise to novels such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) and Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796)