Enroll in Gothic Literature with Dolphin STEM Academy

Course Overview

This one-semester course has 14 lessons, plus five Course Activities. Each lesson contains one
or more Lesson Activities. It explores different conventions, themes, and elements of Gothic
literature through the analysis of representative literary works, such as Emily Dickinson’s poems
about mortality and spirituality, Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Gothic novella Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic short stories, Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
Robert Browning’s Gothic poems, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Gothic drama, The Cenci, Mary
Shelley’s classic Gothic novel, Frankenstein, Gothic parodies and Gothic subgenres, and
modern Gothic literature.

You will submit the Course Activity documents to your teacher, and you will grade your work in
the Lesson Activities by comparing them with sample responses. The Course Activities
(submitted to the teacher) and the Lesson Activities (self-checked) are the major components of
this course. There are other assessment components, namely the mastery test questions that
feature along with the lesson and an end-of-semester test. These mastery test questions are a
combination of simple multiple-choice questions and technology enhanced (TE) questions.

Course Goals

This course will help you meet the following goals:
Learn about Gothic literature and trace the history and development of this literary genre.
Analyze the Gothic elements in Emily Dickinson’s poems.
Examine the themes and characters of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Examine the central themes in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Explore the significance and role of genre in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories “The Black Cat”
and “The Cask of Amontillado.”
Analyze the historical and cultural significance of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Explore how the myth of the vampire has been developed and adapted over time since
Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Examine the characteristics of theme and form in Robert Browning’s poems.
Examine the characteristics of the Gothic drama in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci.
Analyze Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel Frankenstein.
Examine the emergence of Gothic parodies as a response to the popularity of the Gothic genre.
Examine the emergence of Gothic subgenres, such as Southern Gothic and African American Gothic.
Discuss contemporary Gothic literature.