Haunted houses, uncanny visitations, borderline states of mind – some stock features of ghost stories. English literary history has many of them to offer. In this proseminar we will dig into this rich legacy, reading stories about ghosts, and what happens when people meet them, from the Romantic period to the present day. We will discuss the many possible interpretations of ghosts, as they often stand for unwanted thoughts, repressed, socially not acceptable desires, or individual or collective guilt. We will identify recurrent features of the ghost story but also observe how this genre has been changing with time. Most of the texts we will discuss are relatively short: short stories by Sir Walter Scott, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, and John Lanchester, a novella by Henry James. But we will also read one novel, The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill. Most of these are classics, and by contextualizing the ghosts we meet in this proseminar, we’ll be able to take a tour through English literary and cultural history.
- Teacher: Nino Liam Töndury