Year 1: Roots of the Swamp

ST102 Gothic Monsters

Five nineteenth and early twentieth-century texts that built the modern monster, read closely and then read through monster theory, so that when Swamp Thing rises from the water you know exactly what tradition he is standing in.

6 lessons 6 units 2 assignments

Introduction

Swamp Thing did not arrive from nowhere. Every convention Wein and Wrightson reached for, the laboratory, the ruined body, the double, the old house, the indifferent cosmos, was made by an earlier writer and worn smooth by a century of use. This module reads five of those makers: Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. All five texts are out of copyright and free to read.

The sixth week turns to theory. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's seven theses, Noel Carroll's account of why we enjoy being horrified, Julia Kristeva's idea of the abject and Jack Halberstam's reading of the Gothic body are the tools the rest of the degree uses. You will meet them here in order, after you have formed your own view of the monsters, so that theory sharpens your reading rather than replacing it.

The habit this module builds is comparison. Each lesson asks you to hold a nineteenth-century monster beside the creature from the Louisiana swamp and say, with evidence, what has been inherited and what has been changed.

Learning objectives

  • Read five foundational Gothic texts closely and identify their central monster and the fear it carries.
  • Recognise and name the major Gothic conventions: the made body, the double, the invader, the decaying house, the indifferent cosmos.
  • Apply monster theory (Cohen, Carroll, Kristeva, Halberstam) to a primary text with precision.
  • Compare a nineteenth-century monster with Swamp Thing on a defined point, using evidence from both.
  • Write a close reading of prose that attends to sentence, image and point of view.
  • Keep a research record in the Green Book that separates your own reaction from what critics say.

Lessons

Unit 1: Week 1: The made body

Frankenstein and the creature who was never given a name.

  1. Frankenstein: the made bodyShelley's creature, the maker who runs, and the pattern every made monster since has followed.180 min

Unit 2: Week 2: The double

Jekyll and Hyde: two selves in one body.

  1. Jekyll and Hyde: the doubleStevenson's novella and the monster who is also the man.120 min

Unit 3: Week 3: The invader

Dracula: contagion, borders, and the monster who comes to you.

  1. Dracula: the invaderStoker's vampire, the epistolary novel, and the horror of what gets in.240 min

Unit 4: Week 4: The house and the land

Poe's Usher: decay as landscape.

  1. The Fall of the House of Usher: the house as bodyPoe's tale of a family, a building and a tarn rotting together, and the Gothic landscape it left to the swamp.90 min

Unit 5: Week 5: The indifferent cosmos

Lovecraft's colour: the land poisoned by something that does not care.

  1. The Colour Out of Space: cosmic and ecological horrorLovecraft's story of a farm blighted by something from a meteorite, read as the first great ecohorror.100 min

Unit 6: Week 6: What monsters are for

Cohen, Carroll, Kristeva, Halberstam: the theory, after the texts.

  1. Monster theory: Cohen, Kristeva, HalberstamThe tools of the trade, met after you have formed your own view.150 min

Core texts

Secondary reading

Assessment

Two assessed pieces. The first is a close reading of one passage from one of the module's primary texts, on how the monster's body is described. The second is a comparative essay using at least two of Cohen's theses to set Swamp Thing beside one nineteenth-century monster.

ST102-A1: Close reading: the monstrous body in prose

Choose one passage of no more than two pages from Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula, "The Fall of the House of Usher" or "The Colour Out of Space" in which a monstrous body (or a place treated as a body) is described. How does the prose make it monstrous?

Length
1500 words (1350 to 1650)
Sources
Primary source only. Primary source only. One passage, quoted in full, analysed in detail. No secondary reading.

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ST102-A2: Essay: Swamp Thing among the monsters

Using two of Cohen's seven theses, compare the Swamp Thing of Wein and Wrightson's first issues with one nineteenth or early twentieth-century monster from this module. What does the comparison reveal about what each monster is for?

Length
2000 words (1800 to 2200)
Sources
Research assignment, minimum 1 secondary sources. Research assignment. Cohen's "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)" is required and must be cited. Further secondary sources are optional. Primary evidence from both the comic and the chosen text is required.

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Source requirements

Assignment 1 is primary source only. Assignment 2 is a research assignment with one required secondary source (Cohen's "Monster Culture"); further secondary reading from the module list is welcome but not required.