Profs & Pints DC: The Gothic Ghosts of Christmas

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Gothic Ghosts of Christmas,” a look at the old English tradition of telling terrifying tales at Yuletide, with Marianne Noble, professor of Literature at American University.

The ghosts who visited Scrooge had plenty of company. In fact, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is just one of many ghost stories from the Victorian English tradition of telling frightening tales during the dark nights of the winter holidays. Whereas today we might read—or watch on television—tales of elves or reindeer or snowmen, those gathered around a fire on Christmas Eve in old England would tell each other stories of ghosts, graves, dead bodies, and murders.

Come to Penn Social to become immersed in this long-lost literary art and learn about its origins and evolution. Your guide on this scholarly journey, Dr. Marianne Noble, writes and teaches courses on nineteenth-century Gothic literature.

She’ll look at how the…