Module Information
Course Delivery
| Delivery Type | Delivery length / details |
|---|---|
| Lecture | 10 x 1 Hour Lectures |
| Seminar | 10 x 2 Hour Seminars |
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Semester Exam | 3 Hours Examination paper | 50% |
| Semester Assessment | 2500 word essay | 50% |
| Supplementary Assessment | Resubmit failed or missing 2500 word essay | 50% |
| Supplementary Exam | 3 Hours Resit missed of failed exam | 50% |
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module students should be able to:
1. discuss in detail 5 canonical texts identifying teir influence upon the devlopment of literature in English.
2. identify and discuss key formal characteristics linked to the respective historical contexts.
3. analyse the representation of self and place in relation to narrative technique, genre, context.
4. understand the ways in which contemporary theoretical concepts can be applied to texts from the pre-1800 period.
5. devise and demonstrate strategies for constructing analytical arguments focusing on long texts.
Aims
- To provide students with knowledge and understanding of five key texts from the English canon.
- To augment students' engagement with texts studied elsewhere on their course that appropriate, reference and reflect these texts.
- To enable students to demonstrate knowledge of key texts that future employers might expect an English / English & Creative Writing graduate to have encountered.
Brief description
The module looks at 5 texts that are key to the development of literature in English and that feed into other modules that study texts influenced by these literary precursors. The module is designed to give students the time and space in which to study these difficult texts in detail, paying attention to context, genre, close reading and thematic connections. It is unique to other modules in that the number of texts studied is approximately half of the usual load, this is to give students the time to read texts that would usually be excluded from the curriculum due to length. The module focuses on the representation of self and place as a thread that draws these texts together, but is not intended to suggest a linear development; instead the module will approach this topic by positioning each text as a cultural /historical snapshot in ongoing narratives of literary constructions of identity.
Content
Lecture 1: Module introduction, aims, objective and themes
Seminar 1: Strategies for reading long texts
Week 2
Lecture 2: Reading Milton's Paradise Lost
Seminar 2: Place and Character in Paradise Lost
Week 3
Lecture 3: The English Epic and John Milton
Seminar 3: Form and structure in Paradise Lost
Week 4
Lecture 4: The Early English Novel and Daniel Defoe
Seminar 4: Narrative Strategies in Robinson Crusoe
Week 5
Lecture 5: Crusoe in Context: Colonialism, Identity and Politics
Seminar 5: Ways of reading Crusoe's colonial endeavour
Week 6
Lecture 6: The Lyrical Self and The Prelude
Seminar 6: The Prelude as Autobiography
Week 7
Lecture 7: Touring the Sublime in The Prelude
Seminar 7: Romanticism and Place in The Prelude
Week 8
Lecture 8: The Realist Novel
Seminar 8: Narrative Strategies in Middlemarch
Week 9
Lecture 9: Narrating the Provincial
Seminar 9: Place and Identity in Middlemarch
Week 10
Lecture 10: From Milton to Eliot
Seminar 10: Middlemarch and module roundup
Module Skills
| Skills Type | Skills details |
|---|---|
| Application of Number | N/A |
| Communication | Written: By construction of critical argument in coursework essays and exams Oral: Through class discussion, small group exercises, and seminar presentations [assessed formatively, not summatively] |
| Improving own Learning and Performance | Through reflection on feedback |
| Information Technology | By using word-processing packages; using AberLearn Blackboard and other e-resources to research and access course documents and other materials; by submitting assignments via Turnitin |
| Personal Development and Career planning | Through critical self-reflection and the development of transferable ICT, communication and research skills |
| Problem solving | By evaluative analysis and the use of critical skills |
| Research skills | By directed and independent research; by synthesizing information in an evaluative critical argument |
| Subject Specific Skills | Through the 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 | Through group work in seminars |
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 5