123045 PS PS Literary Studies (2022W)

This course focuses on the evolution of the vampire as a literary character over the past two hundred years. 2022 marks the 125th anniversary of the publication of Bram Stoker’s _Dracula_ (1897), which function as the most prominent point of reference in the vampire’s invasion of collective imagination. But however important Stoker’s work is, the vampire as a literary character has long been a part of folklore, myths and legends traditionally told orally at first, and the emergence of the vampire in literature and the arts begins earlier, stemming directly from the Age of Reason’s dismissal of superstitions and religious beliefs. Stoker’s novel relies on several earlier works of the nineteenth century, whether they are poems, penny bloods or novellas, which we will examine in this course. At the beginnings of the industrial age and in the Victorian context, the rise of fantasy and of tales of questioned or threatened social order acted as a means of catharsis amidst a society and landscape that were changing with alarming speed. It is indeed this cathartic quality that explains the universality of the vampirism motif and its popularity all the way to the twenty-first century; and we will therefore also consider how the character of the vampire keeps developing post-Stoker, between continuity and evolution.

Participants will gain knowledge of some nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts in relation to a precise cultural topos, as well as an understanding of how literary texts function and evolve in response to significant historical and cultural contexts. The course will also enable participants to develop their practical skills in the critical analysis of literary texts, and will tackle the basic techniques of academic writing, such as how to formulate a research question and how to structure a paper.