The Gothic genre has inspired many creative minds to explore the darker realms of human psychology and the wider world, sparking fear, terror, horror and repulsion in its audience. J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth is as much a ruined Gothic wasteland as it is an idyllic utopia. From Shelob's cave and the hypnotic Mirkwood to the Paths of the Dead and the Barrow-Downs, this module will examine Tolkien's use of Dark Romantic and Gothic techniques that were used by writers such as Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and E.T.A. Hoffman to strike terror in the heart of their readers.

The module is structured as follows:
• Class 1: The Funk of Forty Thousand Years: A Literary History of the Gothic (60m)
• Class 2: Nevermore… Echoes of the Supernatural (60m)
• Class 3: Curdling the Milk: Repulsion and Horror (60m)
• Class 4: Conjuring Creepy Creatures (60m)
• Class 5: The Dark Side of the Mind (90m)
• Class 6: History’s Horrific Ruins (60m)
• Class 7: Wild and Deadly Landscapes (90m)