Admission Requirements
None.
Description
Why do we enjoy the fantastic? What has been the fate of the modern fairy tale? What is the pleasure in the representation of terror? What are the cultural meanings of dreaming? What is the place of the uncanny? How does twentieth-century British literature and film represent the supernatural? How do such texts illuminate our sense of British culture and history? What is the audience for fantasy? What distinguishes a text for children from one intended for adults?
Using the insights of psychoanalysis, political theory, and literary theory we will attempt to answer these questions. The course will include children’s books, ghost stories, Gothic fictions, science fiction, and the fantasy film. We will examine the following themes in fantastic fictions from twentieth-century Britain: the production of fear; the imagination of childhood; nostalgia; the double; transgression and containment; kitsch; the fictionalization of reality; the uses of the unreal; the representation of dreams and fugitive states; the critique of science; frontiers and otherness; conformity and individualism; innocence and corruption.
Course Objectives
This course will extend and deepen the power of students’ literary critical analysis through in-depth consideration of texts. Students will explore critical debates surrounding the fantastic. In so far as this course deals with film, it will aim to provide for literature students the critical skills necessary for the analysis of visual texts. This will involve an understanding of: basic film theory; the uses of the frame and editing; the place of the ‘star’; the nature of genre; and the ‘auteur theory’. Regarding both literary and cinematic art works, it will also aim to extend the students’ skills in the reading of narrative and the understanding of the relationship of a text to its cultural/social context. Students will be encouraged to share analytical and critical views on the texts ascribed in class discussion, including short presentations, and will focus research skills in the writing of a final research paper, on a relevant subject of their own choice within the parameters of the course.
Timetable
The timetable will be available from July 1 onwards on the Department website.
Mode of Instruction
Two-hour seminar per week.
Assessment
The final mark is based on active class participation, and either two final essays (roughly 3000-3500 words) or one final essay (6000-7000 words).
Blackboard
This course is supported by Blackboard.
Reading list
*Required reading
Where a film or television programme forms the subject of a class, a screening will be organized or, if absolutely necessary, students will be expected to view the film prior to the class in their own time.*
Bram Stoker, Dracula (Oxford World Classics).
Oscar Wilde, Complete Short Fiction (Penguin Classics).
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895) / The Invisible Man (1897). (both available in Penguin Classics).
M.R. James, Casting the Runes, and Other Stories (Oxford World Classics).
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908). (any edition that contains the illustrations by E. H. Shepherd – i.e. Egmont Books).
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (Oxford World Classics or Penguin Classics).
Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson (Modern Library) and Seven Men and Two Others (Prion Humour Classics).
A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh (1926). (any edition that contains the illustrations by E. H. Shepherd).
C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (HarperCollins) and The Silver Chair (HarperCollins).
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (HarperCollins).
George Orwell, Animal Farm (Penguin) and 1984 (Penguin).
Philippa Pearce, Tom’s Midnight Garden (Oxford University Press).
Catherine Storr, Marianne Dreams (Faber & Faber).
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (Penguin).
Registration
Students can register through uSis.
Register for ‘Contractonderwijs’ via: www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/onderwijs/contractonderwijs
Contact information
English Department, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 103c. Phone: 071 527 2144, or mail: english@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Remarks
WEEK ONE: FIN DE SIÈCLE VAMPIRES: Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897).
WEEK TWO: FIN DE SIÈCLE GHOSTS, FAIRIES AND CLAIRVOYANTS: Oscar Wilde, ‘The Happy Prince’, ‘The Selfish Giant’, ‘The Fisherman and His Soul’, ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’, ‘The Portrait of Mr W.H.’, ‘The Canterville Ghost’, and ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ in Complete Short Fiction (Penguin Classics).
WEEK THREE: SCIENCE FICTIONS: H G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895) and The Invisible Man (1897).
WEEK FOUR: GHOSTS: M.R. James, Casting the Runes, and Other Stories; Robert Hamer, Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, Charles Crichton etc (directors), Dead of Night (1946) (film).
WEEK FIVE: THE RIVERBANK AND THE WILD WOOD: Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908); A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh (1926).
WEEK SIX: THE FANTASTIC THRILLER: G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908).
WEEK SEVEN: COMIC FANTASY: Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson (1911) and ‘Enoch Soames’ from Seven Men (1919).
WEEK EIGHT: THE INKLINGS 1: C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and The Silver Chair (1953).
WEEK NINE: CINEMATIC FANTASY: Michael Powell (director) and Emeric Pressburger (script), A Matter of Life and Death (1946) (film). (Released in America under the title, Stairway to Heaven.)
WEEK TEN: DYSTOPIAS 1: George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949).
WEEK ELEVEN: THE INKLINGS 2: J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-5).
WEEK TWELVE: POST-WAR CHILDREN’S FANTASY: Philippa Pearce, Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958); Catherine Storr, Marianne Dreams (1958).
WEEK THIRTEEN: DYSTOPIAS 2: Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962); Nigel Kneale (writer/director), The Year of the Sex Olympics (1969) (television film).