LT 342 - Gothic Ireland: Folklore and Fiction

The Irish imagination has long held a deep fascination with macabre stories of ghosts, changelings, and other supernatural manifestations. It is a legacy that can be traced back to the mythology and folklore of pagan times and, in some cases, such as in the legends of the Banshee, the púca, and the Dullahan, have been maintained in wives’ tales and superstitions right through to the present day. This course will explore the supernatural side of Irish fiction by tracing the origins of Irish “Gothic”—beginning with folkloric traditions, continuing to the rise of vampire fiction in the nineteenth century, and finishing with more recent works of fiction about fairies, ghosts, hauntings, and witch hunts. We will begin with a selection of writings from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that depict Ireland as a country inhabited by capricious fairies and supernatural beings, along with accounts that describe Dublin as a dark, dangerous place filled with ghosts, ghouls, and acts of treachery. Ireland’s deep-rooted superstitions inspired the literary creations of Sheridan Le Fanu, planted the seeds of inspiration for Bram Stoker’s ground-breaking novel, Dracula, and helped to give rise to Oscar Wilde’s sinister and thought-provoking piece, The Picture of Dorian Gray. 

We will look at how these early works, superstitions, and folklore influenced contemporary Irish writers such as John Connolly and Peadar Ó Guillín, discuss Conor McPherson’s take on vampires in his dramatic monologue St Nicholas, and delve into Martina Devlin’s gripping novel The House Where It Happened, which is a fictionalized account of Ireland’s last witch trial that took place in Co. Antrim in 1711. We will consider Irish Gothic within the social, political, and cultural contexts that inform the genre's engagement with gender, sexuality, race, marginalization, and class structure.