Parapet on Afterward (BBC film adaptation of Wharton’s ghost story)
… but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid? — Austen, Northanger Abbey
Dear friends and readers,
I’ve sent and have good reason to think this proposal has been accepted by the OLLI people at GMU for this coming fall 2014. The emphasis is not historical; I’ve chosen short, contemporary and turn of the 19th century texts, and recent powerful films:
The Gothic
This course will explore the gothic mode in fiction and film. It’s an outlook found in a vast terrain of sub-genres, where images, plot-, and character types repeat like a recipe. Take one labyrinthine or partly ruined dwelling, fold inside one murderous incestuous father or chained mother (preferably in a dungeon), heroes and heroines (various kinds, as wanderers, nuns, friars), stir with a tempest; be sure to have on hand blood, night-birds, and supernatural phenomena, with fore-action or back-stories set in the past. We’ll be reading short stories, beginning with ghosts, witches, moving to vampire, werewolf, and then modern socially critical mysteries and the paranormal (stories of possession). We’ll cover terror, horror, male and female gothic. The course culminates in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly; Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963 version) and an excerpt from The Dark Angel (featuring Peter O’Toole). Most texts will be found on-line and include: LeFanu’s “Green Tea” and/or “Carmilla;” Marion Crawford’s “For the Blood is the Life;” R. L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; Doyle’s “Adventure of Abbey Grange;” Wharton “Afterward” and/or “Kerfol;” M. R. James’s “The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral;” and Suzy Charnas’s “Unicorn Tapestry.”
The course lasts for 8 weeks and begins in early September.
We have on Trollope19thCStudies in the last few months read and discussed Sheridan LeFanu’s Wyvern Mystery and the fine film adaptation of it, read 5 of LeFanu’s ghost stories, and will soon embark on Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Making of the Marchioness which combines with a sequel, was turned into a gothic film adaptation for PBS, The Making of a Lady, and LeFanu’s Uncle Silas (the source for Dark Angel).
I am still typing Smith’s Ethelinde, or the Recluse of the Lake, and have embarked on reading Eleanor Sleath’s Orphan of the Rhine to write an introductory essay — both for Valancourt Press. Recently I wrote a review of Tyler Tichelaar’s The Gothic Wanderer where I also went over an excellent anthology of different ways to teach the gothic too. I will be reviewing Susan Wolfson’s Harvard Press edition of Northanger Abbey too — it has the loveliest of illustrations throughout.
Fuseli, The Shepherd’s Dream
I seem never to let go of the gothic. I’ve got Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe beat … .
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
Will you come to Brooklyn and teach this class next? It sounds fantastic.
Thank you for this kind reply.
I’m definitely praying for you, Ellen.
I also loved how you said you are way ahead of Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland. I wonder what they would think if they knew whole classes are taught on the Gothic and the flood of vampire and other Gothic stories and films today.
Tyler
Thank you, Tyler, I can’t have too many helps against the power of this omnipotent DMV. How institutions gain such a hold is worth not only study but efforts to prevent it. On top of this one’s driver’s license functions as an identity card in our society, a ticket to vote in a few states now.
I will certainly carry on sharing here — and over the Northanger novels. I’m not sure I have read any of the Northanger novels, maybe dipped into one or two. Varma overstates ludicrously their value and quality but they are not as bad as people assume. Sadleir’s essay is just.
How would 18th century people regard our studying these gothics? or 19th century people? so much about our society nowadays would startle them — beginning with our list-serve and cyberspace lives. I do think however powerful and rich the 1% becomes again, the past 70 years will not be erased or forgotten and the 99% will “rise” again — we are, not exactly unstoppable, but re-grouping and finding new ways. Aware at least we must stop these fits of absent-mindedness.
Ellen