Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. ed. Michael Gamer. Penguin Classics, 2001.
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. ed. Pauline Nestor. Penguin Classics, 2003.
Byatt, Antonia S. Possession: A Romance. Vintage, 1991.
NB please be aware that there are substantial printing difference between editions of this text published for British or US readers respectively. Try to obtain a British version! For more on this, see here:
http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic97/nowak/8_97.html
Additional reading to prepare yourself for this course:
Regis, Pamela. "Part Two: The Romance Novel Defined" in A Natural History of the Romance Novel. U of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. (see Stud-IP for the PDF of this chapter)
NB: Please be aware that all these texts are long and complex novels and that this course entails considerable reading!
The Romance has come a long way from its Hellenistic episodal roots, and can be considered as much an alternative model to the novel as its precursor. Baggy, shapeless and often cliché-ridden, it poses definite challenges of its own to an analytical approach. This seminar, a part of the AM II on genre, will be tracing the British Romance’s path from ironic 18th century origins to intricate post-modern narratives. Through an analysis of selected key works, including Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto," Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights," and A.S. Byatt's "Possession," we will dissect the genre's transformations. We will examine how Walpole's ironic hoax unwittingly laid the groundwork for gothic fiction. While Brontë's late-Romantic adaptation of Romance topoi challenges her contemporaries’ conventions, the modern bodice-ripper romance ironically owes much to her novel, as several movie adaptations attest. Byatt's post-modern perspective on the other hand interweaves both romance and irony and has produced an outstanding work of Neo-Victorianism as well as a satire on contemporary academic pursuits. While the genre in its more generic forms has only recently become a point of academic interest, these (canonized) works show that throughout history, the romance has continued to inform the novel and vice versa to great benefit of both forms. Please obtain the above-listed printed versions of our course readings!
