Module Information
Course Delivery
| Delivery Type | Delivery length / details |
|---|---|
| Lecture | 20 x 1 Hour Lectures |
| Seminar | 10 x 1 Hour Seminars |
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Semester Assessment | One x 2000 word essay | 30% |
| Semester Assessment | Oral presentation | 20% |
| Semester Exam | 2 Hours One x two-hour examination | 50% |
| Supplementary Assessment | If resitting the oral examination, you should submit a script as if for presentation together with any handouts or copies of powerpoint slides and a short reflective piece on how this material would be used in a presentation. Make good any missing assessment elements and/or resubmit any failed coursework assignments (writing on a fresh topic) and/or sit the supplementatry examination paper. | |
| Supplementary Exam | 2 Hours Re-sit examination Re-sit examination | 100% |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of the module, students should be able to:
1. Demonstrate competence in the interpretation and analysis of a range of texts drawn from the period 1300-1800.
2. Demonstrate an informed awareness of appropriate historical contexts.
3. Discuss literary texts wtih sensitivity to issues of historical difference and continuity.
4. Demonstrate a basic competence in the construction and delivery of an oral presentation.
5. Relate their own arguments to current critical debate about particular texts.
Brief description
The module seeks to develop students' knowledge and informed enjoyment of literature from the centuries before 1800, helping you to deal with the particular challenges that such texts pose for modern readers, and increasing your confidence in handling this rewarding material, much of which will be unfamiliar. Study of a closely linked set of romance narratives offers a gateway to the medieval period. Detailed analysis of a carefully chosen group of poems from the period 1500-1800 equips students with a set of necessary reading strategies that will help to open up an area that may intially seem strange and induce nerves. Intensive focus on a familiar Shakespeare play, 'Othello', allows you to explore the text from a variety of different historical and theoretical perspectives, enlarging the sense of what 'reading' a literary text might imply. Finally, concentration on a group of early eighteenth-century texts about women's experience both introduces this literary period and gives an opportunity to develop further key historical and theoretical concerns.
Content
1. Introduction to the module
2-4. Reading Medieval Poetry: the Breton Lai (reference to the 'Lais' of Marie de France and the ME romances 'Sir Orfeo' and 'Sir Launfal')
5-6. Skills Sessions: how to design and deliver an effective oral presentation
7-10. Reading Early Modern Poetry (with reference to a range of poetry in a variety of different genres across the priod 1500-1800; poems by Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, Mary Wroth, John Donne, Isabella Whitney, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Gray)
11-12. Skills Sessions: skills of note-taking and summarising arguments, best practice in citation and in use of secondary materials.
13-16. Reading a Renaissance Play: Shakespeare's 'Othello' (approaching the play through a variety of historical contexts and modern theoretical perspectives)
17-20. Reading Gender in Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Drama (with reference to Daniel Defoe's 'Moll Flanders', Eliza Haywood's 'Fantomina' and Susannah Centlivre's 'The Busybody'
Seminars
1. Introduction
2-3. The Breton Lai
4. Early Modern Poetry: Sonnets
5. Early Modern Poetry: Satire and Pastoral
6. Early Modern Poetry: Elegy and Ode
7-8. Othello
9. Moll Flanders
10. Haywood/Centlivre
Module Skills
| Skills Type | Skills details |
|---|---|
| Application of Number | n/a |
| Communication | Written - developing a sustained critical argument Oral - group discussions and seminar presentations |
| Improving own Learning and Performance | Independent research and reading |
| Information Technology | Use of word-processing packages, use of Blackboard adn other e-resources to research and access course documents and other materials |
| Personal Development and Career planning | Critical self-reflection and the development of transferable, ICT, communication and research skills |
| Problem solving | Evaluative analysis and critical skills |
| Research skills | Independent research adn synthesizing information in an evaluative argument |
| Subject Specific Skills | Reading, writing and researching skills involved in the interrogation of literary texts, and the conceptual/theoretical analysis of works of imaginative literature in relation to a range of other non-literary texts. |
| Team work | Group work in seminars and/or preparation of paired presentations for seminars |
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 4