Aufbauseminar Literatures of Terror and Horror Re Inventing Fear Tue 12.30 14.00

NOTE: The class is now full. For those who signed up earlier, there will be a waiting list. Registration will be re-opened on April 4th, 2016 so that people can DE-REGISTER. No new registrations will be accepted. Students who have been accepted (zugelassen) to class are expected to be present in the first session, otherwise their place will be made available to people on the waiting list. • • -Hush! I hear something, down—down in the cellars. It is a creaking sound. My God, it is the opening of the great, oak trap [door]. What can be doing that? [...] There are steps on the stairs; strange padding steps, that come up and nearer...- (Hodgson. 1908. The House on the Borderland.) Tales of wonder, tales of terror, contes cruels, Schauerliteratur, ghost stories, weird fiction, Gothic fiction, supernatural literature, fear-literature... There have been many labels for what is sometimes considered to be a single genre, a genre that we might now call -horror fiction.- But why horror? What is it that makes these stories horrible and horrifying? More importantly, what does it mean to be horrified in the first place? And is there a difference between, say, feelings of horror and fear, or horror and terror? In this class, we will look at a cross section of horror fiction from different eras under the premise that emotion words like 'horror', 'terror', 'wonder' and 'fear', do not need to refer to a simple, pre-configured idea of emotion, but are as mutable as the genres that they label. Looking at texts from Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) to Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) to Clive Barker's Books of Blood (1984), we will look at the emotions described and presented in the texts, their plots, characters, and — last but not least — monsters. By comparing our findings to different approaches of the horror genre, we will ask: Do these texts present the same idea of horror, or would it be more accurate to speak an invention — or re-invention — of horror? At the same time, we will look at the development of the genre itself and look at various approaches that attempt to answer the seemingly simple question: -Why do we fear fictions?- Primary texts (Listed in order of discussion incl. recommended versions of the texts:) • Hodgson, William Hope. 1908 (2009). The House on the Borderland. Rockville, MD: Wildside Press. ISBN: 978-1434409959. [or: Dover Publishing, 2008. ISBN: 978-0486468792] • Herbert, James. 1974 (2010). The Rats. London: Pan Books. ISBN 978-0-330-51520-7. • Barker, Clive. 1998. Books of Blood Omnibus 1: Volumes 1–3. New York: Sphere. ISBN: 978-0-7515-1022-5. Notes on the texts: When ordering Barker's Books of Blood, make sure to order the Omnibus edition that contains Volumes 1 through 3, not the second Omnibus (4–6) or just Volume 1. While the use of Kindle and other e-book versions is not prohibited, you are expected to know how to operate your respective e-reader device or app. Additional literary texts will be made available electronically. Secondary sources Goodman, Languages of Art (1968). Kristeva, Powers of Horror (1982). Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (1990). Russell, -Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion- (2003). All secondary texts will be made available electronically. Zielgruppe The class is open to students of the BA Aufbaumodul (PO 2005) and the Advanced Module (PO 2011/2013). Anglistik u.Amerikanistik (BA, PO 2013) Kernfach Universität Düsseldorf SoSe 2016 Brümmer Gero