ENGL-437

This course focuses on the popular British genres of adventure, mystery and fantasy fiction, from the nineteenth century to the present. In contrast to the dominant British style of realism, which focuses on ordinary individuals and commonplace reality, these alternative genres focus on the criminal, the exotic, the bizarre, or the supernatural. The course begins with the Gothic, next examines Victorian sensation fiction, fantasy, and adventure, as well as the emergence of the mystery genre with Sherlock Holmes, and finishes with an exploration of modern fantasy novels such as The Hobbit and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.