4. Heathcliff as Villain

About this Lecture

Lecture

In the previous module, we concluded that Heathcliff’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” characterized him as a kind of Romantic hero. In this module, we consider the negative side of Heathcliff: his volatility, his violence, and his cruelty. Indeed, it seems that Heathcliff’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” has two entirely distinct aspects – and it is this ‘doubleness’ that we will explore in the following module.

Course

In this course we look at several aspects of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. In the first six sections, we focus on Romanticism and what it means to call Heathcliff a Romantic hero. In second six sections, we focus on individual themes in the novel, including the concepts of alienation, madness and hysteria, town and country, nostalgia, and the Gothic.

Lecturer

Alfie Bown is Lecturer in Digital Media Culture and Technology at Royal Holloway, University of London. His principle research interests are in psychoanalysis, digital media, critical theory and videogames, though he has also published in nineteenth-century studies, film studies and medieval studies. He is author of The Playstation Dreamworld (2017) and In the Event of Laughter (2018) among other things. His most recent book is an edited collection of essays entitled Post-Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production (2019).