Scholars have since Mario Praz in the 1930s long conceived of the Gothic as a European phenomenon, exported and imported between Britain, France, and Germany, but there is surprisingly little attempt to unify this tradition or consider it as a whole beyond the empirical level. This course starts from the question: `What happens if you bring the Gothic Novel, the roman noir, and the Schauerroman together? The course will act as an introduction to the English canon of the Gothic; but we shall look at a range of texts, not as a tight, unified English genre, but as a set of cultural responses (and translations of responses) to the ages of Enlightenment and Revolution. The emphasis is not simply on linear development, but on cultural transmission and the dispersal of ideas between France, Germany and the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The texts have been chosen to reveal a set of conversations with each other and we shall re-read familiar (`central' or 'classic') texts in relation to such themes as the cultural geography of fear; superstition and scepticism and the role of the occult; sensibility and sexual taboo; the nature of the demonic; constructions of the other; the invention and splitting of the modern self; the Machine; the Uncanny; comedy and horror; and the use of self-conscious modes of narration. Note: this module is of interest to literary translators and creative writers.