From fog-shrouded streets and haunted mansions to unseen terrors of the mind, Victorian writers used ghost stories to explore anxieties about belief, science, class, gender, and empire. This course examines how the supernatural became a mirror for Victorian society’s deepest fears and desires. Reading across key authors—including Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Sheridan Le Fanu, Henry James, Arthur Machen, and Marie Trevelyan—we will trace how the ghost story evolved from moral fable to psychological horror and modernist ambiguity.
Students will study a range of tales such as Dickens’s festive hauntings, Gaskell’s compassionate spirits, Le Fanu’s Gothic suspense, and James’s elusive spectres, alongside lesser-known but culturally significant works like Trevelyan’s Welsh ghost lore and Machen’s mystic horrors. Our discussions will engage with contemporary debates about faith and rationality, gender and domesticity, regional identity, and the blurred boundaries between the material and the spectral.
Assessment/requirements: Übung: a short written assignment and an oral presentation; Seminar: term paper of approximately 12–15 pages.
- Kursleiter/in: Stephanie Stratton