On Teaching Early Gothic Fiction and Non-Empiricist Aesthetics

Authors

  • Carrie D. Shanafelt Grinnell College

Keywords:

Gothic, women, realism, empiricism, assignments

Abstract

The aesthetic judgment that Gothic fiction fails to adhere to the standards of modern empiricist realism is usually paired with a consequent moral or social anxiety, that reading Gothic fiction will disturb young readers’ sentiments and lead to absurd or morbid behavior. While teaching courses on Gothic novels, I find my students often feel caught between the demands of realism and the pleasures of terror. While succumbing to the latter may seem to be the anti-intellectual choice, I argue that indulging in a sympathetic reading of Gothic fiction provides students with an alternative to the normative “common sense” of empiricist realism. Students take particular notice of the ways in which the Gothic attempts to provide space for the affective and imaginative experiences of non-normative characters (persons of non-conforming gender and/or sexuality, immigrants, women, people of color, political radicals, religious dissidents, disabled people, young people, etc.) whose experiences have been so often silenced or marginalized in mainstream literary fiction.

Author Biography

Carrie D. Shanafelt, Grinnell College

Carrie Shanafelt is an assistant professor of English at Grinnell College, where she teaches courses on eighteenth-century literature and culture in the context of philosophical discourse. She is the author of "Vicarious Sex and the Vulnerable Eighteenth-Century Reader" (in Literature Interpretation Theory 24) and "Rhetoric of Consensus: Hume and Fielding on Moral Sentiment" (in David Hume: A Tercentenary Tribute, ed. Tweyman), both published in 2013.

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Published

2015-02-08