General Resources

• Book Drum Turn of Screw annotations. Good overview and notes, with a link to Freud’s Studies on Hysteria
• Lamar University Critical Edition A Closer Look at “The Turn of the Screw”

Research Essay 1

Readings for Suggested Research Essay: Is the Governess inventing the ghosts or is the reader to see them as real? (Known as the Apparitionist versus Non-Apparitionist Controversy) Suggested length (1,500-2,500 words).

• The Turn of the Screw Chapter 3 (and 4) will make excellent starting points for this topic. Parkinson provides invaluable discussion of the Apparitionist versus Non-Apparitionist debate.
• Sexton, James. “Non-apparitionist reading of Turn of Screw” (1976).
• Valino, Raul. “The Role of the Governess in The Turn of the Screw,” Odiséa 11.
• Al-Qurani, Shonayfa Mohammed. “Hallucinations or Realities: The Ghosts in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.”
• http://cohenhandouts.wikispaces.com/file/view/EdmundWilsonAmbiguityOfJames.pdf/266013608/EdmundWilsonAmbiguityOfJames.pdf The most famous of the non-apparitionist, Freudian interpretations. This link is an excerpt, but Wilson’s essay is discussed at length in Parkinson above, Chapter 3. The full text is in The Triple Thinkers as well as in Willen, Gerald. A Casebook on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Crowell: New York: 2nd ed. and in Esch, Deborah, and Jonathan Warren, eds. The Turn of the Screw, Norton Critical Editions, 2nd ed. (not reprinted in 1st ed. R. Kimbrough).
• “The Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw.” R. Heilman.  [JSTOR. Your B.C. college library provides free access. If you do not have library access to JSTOR, a read-only version can be accessed online free of charge. See JSTOR “register and read.”]
• “Mr. Edmund Wilson and The Turn of the Screw.” A.J.A. Waldock. [JSTOR] and Willen, 171-173.
• “A Note on the Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw.” [JSTOR] and Willen, 239-44.
• “Give the Screw Another Turn—A Cultural Re-Reading of The Turn of the Screw.”
• “The Role of Repression in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.” Student essay.

Research Essay 2

Compare and contrast any two of the following film adaptations of The Turn of the Screw, stating your preference and why.

(Suggested length) 1,500 words

• A. Dan Curtis dir., 1974 ABC.
• B. Ben Bolt, dir. 1999 ITV, UK; PBS Masterpiece Theatre 2000.
  • http://www.spring.net/karenr/mdbro/tots.html Contains synopsis, production details.
• C. Tim Fywell, dir. 2009. 
  • synopsis, production details.
• Starting Point: After viewing your choice of the two videos, read Dennis Tredy’s detailed article (link below). It discusses Dan Curtis’s 1974 version in detail, see Part II of the essay. Unfortunately, he only gives a paragraph [45] to the Ben Bolt version and, of course, is silent about the 2009 version.
  • Shadows of Shadows – Techniques of Ambiguity in Three Film Adaptations of “The Turn of the Screw”: J. Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), D. Curtis’s The Turn of the Screw (1974), and A. Aloy’s Presence of Mind (1999) [Texte intégral]

Research Essay 3

After consulting two or more good dictionaries of literary terms, such as Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms; Cuddon, J.A. Dictionary of Literary Terms; or A Handbook to Literature, Holman, Harmon, discuss why The Turn of the Screw is a good example of Gothic fiction.

Suggested length: 1,500 words.

Resources for Topic 3:

• The Romantic Period – The Gothic Overview
• http://resources.mhs.vic.edu.au/creating/pages/origins.htm
• Article in open access book: Duperray, Max. “Déjà vu in The Turn of the Screw”
• Sample open-access article on Gothic fiction: “Raising Veils and other Bold Acts: The Heroine’s Agency in Female Gothic Novels” Kyra Kramer. Pages 23-36.
• The Gothic