A dozen years ago at university, I wrote a literature paper arguing that there was an “expansion of the Gothic” in Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter series, starting fairly mildly in Red Dragon, building through Silence of the Lambs, and reaching its peak in Hannibal. Hannibal Rising hadn't been written at this stage, but if it had it would have tied into my thesis beautifully.
It was cobblers, of course, but it got me a good mark. More importantly, it gave me a chance to write about a series of books which I love, rather than the usual musty old rubbish which our lecturers foistered upon us. ( I also managed to work the then-current Paul McGann Doctor Who movie into another paper, but that's a confession for another time.)
There is something to be said for trying to relate what you're studying to something you're actually interested in, rather than some hoary set text. I wonder how much more popular poetry would be at school if all that tedious working out of rhyming patterns and metre was done with pop song lyrics rather than There Is a Garden In Her Face. (Because so many 14 year old boys will relate to that, won't they?)
Similarly, I think I learnt more about Gothic, as a literary genre, from the Lecter books than from the peculiar old texts I read during that particular semester at uni. It's not just about vampires or wizards, any more than you can graft a few spaceships into a Mills and Boon and call it science fiction. Many of the deeper themes which make up the Gothic genre – distorted and pluralised identities, otherness, damnation and redemption - are present in Harris' books, even when the outer trappings are clinical and 20th century. In the newest book, Lecter's ambiguous relationship with his adoptive mother is pure Gothic, as is his... becoming.
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