ENGL 042. The Victorian Supernatural

The nineteenth-century ghost story, weird tale, and horror novel let Victorian writers escape the strictures of realism to express new perspectives on questions of class, gender, sexuality, science and technology, empire, race, psychology, and religion. Supernatural topics allowed writers to experiment with narrative forms, inhabit non-human perspectives, imagine new technologies (automatic writing, telecommunications), question social norms, and test alternative ways of knowing. We will read works by both canonical and less-known authors such as Charlotte Bronte, Rhoda Broughton, Wilkie Collins, Marie Corelli, Catherine Crowe, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Edith Nesbit, Margaret Oliphant and Bram Stoker, as well as journalistic and scientific investigations into supernatural phenomena and spiritualist practices like ghost hunting, seances, and telepathy. No prerequisites. Fulfills the 18th/19th c requirement for English majors.
Humanities
1 credit
Spring 2026. Buurma.
Catalog chapter: Ennglish Literature
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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