WMBP7002 Lecture on Literature in English A

Hiroshima University Syllabus

Japanese

Academic Year 2026Year School/Graduate School Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Master's Course) Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Humanities Program

Lecture Code WMBP7002 Subject Classification Specialized Education

Subject Name 英語圏文学概論Ａ

Subject Name
（Katakana）エイゴケンブンガクガイロンA

Subject Name in
English Lecture on Literature in English A

Instructor MATSUMOTO MAI

Instructor
(Katakana) マツモト　マイ

Campus Higashi-Hiroshima Semester/Term 1st-Year, Second Semester, 3Term

Days, Periods, and Classrooms (3T) Weds5-6,Fri5-6：Faculty Office

Lesson Style Seminar Lesson Style
(More Details) Face-to-face

Credits 2.0 Class Hours/Week 4 Language of Instruction B : Japanese／English

Course Level 5 : Graduate Basic

Course Area（Area） 23 : Arts and Humanities

Course Area（Discipline） 05 : Literature

Eligible Students

Keywords

Special Subject for Teacher Education 　 Special Subject 　

Class Status
within Educational
Program
(Applicable only to targeted subjects for undergraduate students)
Criterion referenced
Evaluation
(Applicable only to targeted subjects for undergraduate students)

Class Objectives
/Class Outline This course explores how different cultures imagine “the human” through literary form. In the first half of each seminar, we examine representations of the “monster” in English literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Through works ranging from Beowulf and Doctor Faustus to Frankenstein, The Turn of the Screw, and Never Let Me Go, we analyse monstrosity as a figure of divided subjectivity, ethical crisis, scientific excess, institutional violence, and epistemological anxiety. Across literary history, monsters have embodied religious fear, moral weakness, the limits of rational rationality, state surveillance, and the “other” within the self. This portion of the course asks how literature uses monstrosity to reconsider fundamental questions: What is the human? Where does ethical subjectivity emerge?
In the second half of each seminar, we turn to Japanese literature in English translation, reading it explicitly as world literature. Through mythology, court literature, medieval war tales, waka poetry, early modern essays, modern poetry, popular song, detective fiction, and contemporary novels, we explore how Japanese texts articulate emotion, memory, nature, ethics, and embodiment. By approaching Japanese works through translation, we consider how literary forms travel across languages and cultures, and how Japanese literature participates in global conversations about the human condition.
Together, the two halves of the course offer a comparative framework for understanding how English and Japanese traditions—through monsters and ghosts, creation and memory, ethics and beauty—represent human experience across time and cultures.

Class Schedule Part I: English Literature (Monsters) – 60 minutes

Week 1　Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Week 2　Beowulf; Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Week 3　Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
Week 4　Milton, Paradise Lost
Week 5　Shakespeare, Hamlet; Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
Week 6　Godwin, Caleb Williams
Week 7　Hogg, Confessions of a Justified Sinner; Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
Week 8　Collins, Mad Monkton; George Eliot, The Lifted Veil
Week 9　Lewis, The Monk; Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer
Week 10　Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Week 11　Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Week 12　Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Week 13　Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau; Orwell, 1984
Week 14　Keyes, Flowers for Algernon; Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Part II: Japanese Performance (Ghosts) – 30 minutes

FInal Exam

Text/Reference
Books,etc. Copies of the text will be distributed.
Students are expected to complete the assigned reading before each class session.
Secondary Scholarship (Monsters, Gothic, Ethics, Subjectivity)
General Gothic & Monster Theory
• Botting, Fred. Gothic. Routledge, 1996.
• Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror. Routledge, 1990.
• Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minnesota UP, 1996.
• Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke UP, 1995.
• Punter, David, and Glennis Byron. The Gothic. Blackwell, 2004.
Romanticism, Enlightenment, and the Monstrous
• Gigante, Denise. Life: Organic Form and Romanticism. Yale UP, 2009.
• Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. Routledge, 1988.
Victorian Gothic & Psychology
• Smith, Andrew. Victorian Demons: Medicine, Masculinity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle. Manchester UP, 2004.
• Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady. Virago, 1987.
Modern/Postmodern Monsters
• Luckhurst, Roger. The Invention of Telepathy. Oxford UP, 2002.
• Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia UP, 1982.
Cross-cultural Gothic (Japan–UK)
• Olive, Sarah, and Alex Watson. Gothic Monsters in East Asian Culture. Academia.edu, 2016–18.
• Dahlberg-Sears, Robert. “Waste Not a Phantasmic Pedagogy: Childhood Monsters and the ‘Wastefulness Ghost.’” Journal of Folklore and Education 13 (2026): 112–119.

PC or AV used in
Class,etc. Text, Handouts

(More Details)

Learning techniques to be incorporated

Suggestions on
Preparation and
Review Please read the assigned text before each class session.

Requirements

Grading Method Class Participation and Discussion: 30%　Final Examination (paper materials permitted): 70%

Practical Experience

Summary of Practical Experience and Class Contents based on it

Message

Other

Please fill in the class improvement questionnaire which is carried out on all classes.
Instructors will reflect on your feedback and utilize the information for improving their teaching.

Academic Year	2026Year	School/Graduate School	Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Master's Course) Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Humanities Program
Lecture Code	WMBP7002	Subject Classification	Specialized Education
Subject Name	英語圏文学概論Ａ
Subject Name （Katakana）	エイゴケンブンガクガイロンA
Subject Name in English	Lecture on Literature in English A
Instructor	MATSUMOTO MAI
Instructor (Katakana)	マツモト　マイ
Campus	Higashi-Hiroshima	Semester/Term	1st-Year, Second Semester, 3Term
Days, Periods, and Classrooms	(3T) Weds5-6,Fri5-6：Faculty Office
Lesson Style	Seminar	Lesson Style (More Details)	Face-to-face

Credits	2.0	Class Hours/Week	4	Language of Instruction	B : Japanese／English
Course Level	5 : Graduate Basic
Course Area（Area）	23 : Arts and Humanities
Course Area（Discipline）	05 : Literature
Eligible Students
Keywords
Special Subject for Teacher Education		Special Subject
Class Status within Educational Program (Applicable only to targeted subjects for undergraduate students)
Criterion referenced Evaluation (Applicable only to targeted subjects for undergraduate students)
Class Objectives /Class Outline	This course explores how different cultures imagine “the human” through literary form. In the first half of each seminar, we examine representations of the “monster” in English literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Through works ranging from Beowulf and Doctor Faustus to Frankenstein, The Turn of the Screw, and Never Let Me Go, we analyse monstrosity as a figure of divided subjectivity, ethical crisis, scientific excess, institutional violence, and epistemological anxiety. Across literary history, monsters have embodied religious fear, moral weakness, the limits of rational rationality, state surveillance, and the “other” within the self. This portion of the course asks how literature uses monstrosity to reconsider fundamental questions: What is the human? Where does ethical subjectivity emerge? In the second half of each seminar, we turn to Japanese literature in English translation, reading it explicitly as world literature. Through mythology, court literature, medieval war tales, waka poetry, early modern essays, modern poetry, popular song, detective fiction, and contemporary novels, we explore how Japanese texts articulate emotion, memory, nature, ethics, and embodiment. By approaching Japanese works through translation, we consider how literary forms travel across languages and cultures, and how Japanese literature participates in global conversations about the human condition. Together, the two halves of the course offer a comparative framework for understanding how English and Japanese traditions—through monsters and ghosts, creation and memory, ethics and beauty—represent human experience across time and cultures.
Class Schedule	Part I: English Literature (Monsters) – 60 minutes Week 1　Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Week 2　Beowulf; Spenser, The Faerie Queene Week 3　Marlowe, Doctor Faustus Week 4　Milton, Paradise Lost Week 5　Shakespeare, Hamlet; Walpole, The Castle of Otranto Week 6　Godwin, Caleb Williams Week 7　Hogg, Confessions of a Justified Sinner; Dickens, Barnaby Rudge Week 8　Collins, Mad Monkton; George Eliot, The Lifted Veil Week 9　Lewis, The Monk; Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer Week 10　Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Week 11　Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Week 12　Henry James, The Turn of the Screw Week 13　Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau; Orwell, 1984 Week 14　Keyes, Flowers for Algernon; Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go Part II: Japanese Performance (Ghosts) – 30 minutes FInal Exam
Text/Reference Books,etc.	Copies of the text will be distributed. Students are expected to complete the assigned reading before each class session. Secondary Scholarship (Monsters, Gothic, Ethics, Subjectivity) General Gothic & Monster Theory • Botting, Fred. Gothic. Routledge, 1996. • Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror. Routledge, 1990. • Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minnesota UP, 1996. • Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke UP, 1995. • Punter, David, and Glennis Byron. The Gothic. Blackwell, 2004. Romanticism, Enlightenment, and the Monstrous • Gigante, Denise. Life: Organic Form and Romanticism. Yale UP, 2009. • Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. Routledge, 1988. Victorian Gothic & Psychology • Smith, Andrew. Victorian Demons: Medicine, Masculinity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle. Manchester UP, 2004. • Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady. Virago, 1987. Modern/Postmodern Monsters • Luckhurst, Roger. The Invention of Telepathy. Oxford UP, 2002. • Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia UP, 1982. Cross-cultural Gothic (Japan–UK) • Olive, Sarah, and Alex Watson. Gothic Monsters in East Asian Culture. Academia.edu, 2016–18. • Dahlberg-Sears, Robert. “Waste Not a Phantasmic Pedagogy: Childhood Monsters and the ‘Wastefulness Ghost.’” Journal of Folklore and Education 13 (2026): 112–119.
PC or AV used in Class,etc.	Text, Handouts
(More Details)
Learning techniques to be incorporated
Suggestions on Preparation and Review	Please read the assigned text before each class session.
Requirements
Grading Method	Class Participation and Discussion: 30%　Final Examination (paper materials permitted): 70%
Practical Experience
Summary of Practical Experience and Class Contents based on it
Message
Other
Please fill in the class improvement questionnaire which is carried out on all classes. Instructors will reflect on your feedback and utilize the information for improving their teaching.

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