Novels of Sensation: Gothic, Detective Story, Prohibition, and Transgression in Victorian…

Catalog description

In this course we will study and discuss examples of the gothic, sensation, and detective fiction that flooded the literary market during the Victorian period. Like their eighteenth-century gothic predecessors, many of these texts lacked literary respectability, though they achieved best seller status. Far beyond simply providing a jaded reading public with scandalous and suspenseful narratives loaded with sex, crime, mystery and even the supernatural, these texts attempted to expose not only the secrets of their protagonists, but also the seamy underbelly of outwardly respectable Victorian society, epitomized by the family with its angel of the house. Topics for discussion will include the literary and moral value of these sub-genres of the novel and what they reveal about Victorian society's anxiety over transgressive - and therefore prohibited - elements in the domestic and public sphere.