ENGL 320 - From Frankenstein to Dracula: At the Margins of 19th-Century Britain

FC ARHU WADV

4 credits
19th-century novels strive to recreate what one critic called ‘knowable’ communities. In this course, we’ll study texts that explore that which is situated at the very edges of culture, at the limits of the knowable and, often, at the borders of the human. Our course will be rooted in the 19th century, the age not just of Frankenstein’s monster and the blood-thirsty Dracula, but also of Darwinian evolution. We’ll think about how authors from this period conceive of identity and difference, self and other, and we’ll ask just how they define what is ‘normal’ and what lies outside of it.