English 120 - Ghost Stories

Dean Flower

TTh 10:30-11:50

 

 

  Close reading and discussion of famous 19 th century Victorian ghost stor ies by such writers as Dickens, Sheridan Le Fanu, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling and M. R. James, followed by exploration of the genre's permutations in the 20 th century, by such writers as Elizabeth Bowen, L. P. Hartley, Muriel Spark, John Cheever, Shirley Jackson, and Penelope Fitzgerald. Our focus will be on the genre's conventions and the writer's artfulness, but there will be some discussion of earlier ghosts (as in Shakespeare), and some attention to theories of ghosts both psychological and spiritual. A basic principle guiding most of these selections is that the story be truly madly deeply terrifying.

 

Possible texts:

 

The Norton Book of Ghost Stories , ed. Brad Leithauser

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

M. R. James, The Haunted Dollhouse and Other Stories (Penguin)

Muriel Spark, Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark (New Directions)

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Gate of Angels