American Literature: The Gothic and Edgar Allan Poe
Learn about the Gothic and uncanny motifs in the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe. This course explores the elements of fear and anxiety, analyzing how they generate suspense. Discover how Poe’s stories master the elements of horror and create a sense of the uncanny. Perfect for lovers of American literature and those interested in the Gothic and uncanny in terror/horror stories.
What you’ll learn
- The short stories of Edgar Allan Poe
- The motifs of the Gothic and the uncanny
- The elements of horror in fiction
- The specific features of American literature
In this course I will try to offer a glimpse into the most common Gothic and uncanny motifs that occur in the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I the introductory part I intend to discuss examples of both English and American literature, while in the second part of the course emphasis will fall on specific examples/texts by E. A. Poe. This course is more than just literary analysis: we will try to look at the ways the elements of the gothic generate fear and horror, as well as a sense of anxiety. Such elements include, of course, monsters, ghost, doppelgangers, ladies buried alive, mad protagonists, repetition of places, characters and objects, as well as labyrinth like settings, claustrophobic gothic mansions. I will look at how, by what means such elements reflect on characters/narrators and how they create suspense in the most unexpected ways.
Each lesson discusses a story/poem written by Poe and attempts to offer a unique interpretation of these literary texts. How do Poe’s stories master the elements of horror? How do such texts create suspense? To answer these questions we will try to make use of Sigmund Freud’s concept of “the uncanny” as well as Tzvetan Todorov’s concept of “the fantastic.”
Who this course is for:
- Anyone who loves to read and is interested in American literature
- Anyone who wants to learn more about the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe
- Anyone who is interested in the elements of the Gothic and of the uncanny in stories of terror/horror
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