ENGL 490/001: Literature Majors Seminar
Mad Science: Gothic Echoes in Passion Projects Gone Wrong
Term 1: T 12:30-2:00 p.m.
“It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter IV.
Over 40 years ago, Patrick Brantlinger argued in “The Gothic Origins of Science Fiction” that a problem in reading Science Fiction as “realistic prophecy … arises from the fact that the conventions of science fiction derive from the conventions of fantasy and romance, and especially from those of the Gothic romance. Science fiction grows out of literary forms that are antithetical to realism.” More recently, two 2019 essays by Daniel Pietersen on Sublime Horror (republished on his own site), “The universe is a haunted house – the Gothic roots of science fiction” and “Spiders and flies – the Gothic monsters of sci-fi horror,” explore the intersection of terror and horror tropes in what we can only call Gothic Science Fiction.
This course is not about slick shiny optimistic visions of the future; it’s not bold exploration conducted aboard pristine spaceships by intrepid explorers wearing silver jumpsuits with diagonal zippers. It’s not about scientific research that has vastly benefitted worlds and their inhabitants: it’s about bizarre singular passion projects and their progeny, about science gone wrong, about the byways of pseudoscience. We will examine the theoretical bases of contemporary approaches to the Gothic as well as to Science Fiction and apply them to various examples of fiction and film.
Core texts tentatively include Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 edition); Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau; Alien (dir. Ridley Scott), plus 1-2 other short novels and 1-2 other films (I will have the text list finalized by mid-June).
Evaluation will be based on a presentation and its revised report, a presentation response and its report; a term paper; a final reflection essay to be written during the exam period, and participation in discussion.
Keep checking this site for updates concerning texts and requirements.