Year long.

Unit(s) of Assessment	Weighting Towards Module Mark( %)
Formative Essays	10%
Practical Criticism: 1500-word close-reading	30%
Critican Introduction: 2500-word enquiry-based project	60%

The module focuses on the links between reading and writing with a view to encouraging writing practices grounded in and arising from close critical reading. It is based on the premise that writers are first and foremost careful and sensitive readers, who respond in their writing, both consciously and unconsciously, to the world and to the worlds projected by earlier writers.

Students are taught to perceive how writers read in order to write themselves and their world. 

Each text is therefore highly self-reflexive, operating within the constraints of an established tradition; and each comes from a different period in the history of English literature, permitting students to move toward the acquisition of the broad historical sense fundamental to the study of this subject.

In addition this module encourages students to position the text in relation to a suitable critical continuum, emphasising the need to acquire the critical vocabulary to write effectively about the literary effects achieved by creative texts. All material examined is therefore approached through one of the critical approaches featured on the Introduction to Literary Theory.

Over the two semesters students develop their own capacity for self-reflection, building up a portfolio of formative essays, enabling students to appraise themselves critically and to reflect upon their own practices - on how they read to write.

The module aims to introduce students to:

• skills of close textual analysis and critical thinking;

   

• knowledge of the history of English literature;

   

• skills as a writer of and a responder to texts;

   

• ways in which to communicate effectively both orally and in writing;

   

• knowledge and application of literary theory;

   

• ways to work individually and with others;

   

• how to develop time management.

By the end of the module students will be able to:

• analyse a wide range of texts from diverse periods;

   

• think critically about how particular meanings are realised;

   

• produce texts prompted by a critical reading of and response to published;

   

• communicate effectively both orally and in writing across a range of contexts;

   

• work independently on a specific task;

   

• communicate effective feedback to peers.

Semester One

Week 1

Lecture (DA)

I. The Study of English

The introductory session opens with an overview of the module: setting out the central concept and methods of assessment. Students learn about the origin of the study of English and are introduced to the three key practices underpinning this module – periodisation, canon-formation and practical criticism.

In the second half these practices are seen to have been problematised by the theorists studied in the companion module to R2W. The necessity for contextual reading, for canon-reformation and for recognising the problems inherent to any historical label are explained in order to ensure that students can avoid the usual pitfalls associated with the three procedures that remain fundamental to the study of English at university-level.   

Set Text: Extracts from criticism by F.R. Leavis, I.A. Richards, R. Barthes and Michel Foucault will be provided in class.

Assessment 1

Production over the two semesters of a two-page essay every fortnight, due in before the seminar, of the text to be studied that week. Feedback shall be provided at the start of each class. These essays build up over the course of the year into a reading journal of the books studied, enabling students to monitor their own progress. If students choose to build on advice and criticism offered one of the outcomes of this module should be a marked improvement in writing-style and critical skill.

Due: Throughout module

Week 2.

Seminar: The Study of English

Week 3.

Lecture (MWD)

II. Mediaeval

Set Text:

The Book of Margery Kempe (c.1438)

[pp.366-379 in The Norton Anthology, Seventh Ed. Vol.1.]

Introductory Lecture:

Margery Kempe and Traditional Biographical Criticism.

Further Reading :

Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (1994),

Diane Watt, Secretaries of God (1997),

Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury, Penny Summerfield, eds. Feminism and autobiography: texts, theories, methods (2000).

Also, see the following website: www.luminarium.org/medlit/margery.htm

Week 4.

Seminar: Mediaeval

Week 5.

Lecture (MWD)

III. Renaissance

Set Text:

Poems by Sir Walter Raleigh

[pp.878-888 in The Norton Anthology, Seventh Ed. Vol.1.]

Introductory Lecture:

The Self-fashioning of Sir Walter Raleigh: a case-study of the New Historicist criticism

Further Reading :

John Brannigan, New Historicism and Cultural materialism (1998),

Greenblatt, Stephen J., Renaissance self-fashioning : from More to Shakespeare, Chicago (1984).

Waller, Gary F., English poetry of the sixteenth century (1993).

Week 6.

Seminar: Renaissance

Week 7.

Lecture (MWD)

IV. Restoration

Set Text:

Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677-1681),

AVAILABLE ONLINE: Chadwyck-Healey, Cambridge 1996

Introductory Lecture:

Aphra Behn: the first professional female playwright and Reformation of the “Canon”

Further Reading :

Wiseman, Susan. Aphra Behn (2007).

Hughes, Derek and Todd, Janet, The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn (2004)

Week 8.

Seminar: Restoration

Week 9.

Lecture (PIB)

V. Augustan

Set Text:

Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712)

[pp.2505-2577 in The Norton Anthology, Seventh Ed., Vol. 1.]

Introductory Lecture:

How to Read the Gender Politics of Alexander Pope’s Poetry

Further Reading :

Fergusson, Rebecca. "'Quick as Her Eyes, and as Unfix'd as Those': Objectification and Seeing in Pope's Rape of the Lock." Critical Survey 4.2 (1992) 140-6.

Gurr, Elizabeth: Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock, Oxford University Press, 2007

Week 10.

Seminar: Augustan

Week 11

Lecture (AF)

Assessment and Revision

Assessment 2

Over the Christmas break and the final four weeks of Semester 1, students produce a 1500-word essay in which they must perform a close-reading of one of four texts related to material examined in class over the previous fifteen weeks.

Due: 12pm Wednesday 12^th January 2011

Christmas Vacation

Week 12

Revision

Week 13

Exams/ Assessment

Week 14

Exams / Assessment

Week 15

Reading Week

Semester Two

Week 1

Lecture (CM)

VI. Enlightenment

Set Text:

Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771)

[Ed. Jeremy Lewis, Penguin 2008]

Introductory Lecture:

The Formulation of a Genre: Tobias Smollett’s Epistolary Novel

Further Reading :

Altman, Janet Gurkin: Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (1982).

Kauffman, Linda S: Discourses of Desire (1986) and Special Delivery (1992).

Favret, Mary: Romantic Correspondence (1993)

Gilroy , Amanda & Verhoeven, W. M., Epistolary Histories: Letters, Fiction, Culture, 2001.

Week 2

Seminar: Enlightenment

Week 3

Lecture (DA)

VII. Romantic

Set Text:

S.T. Coleridge, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, ‘Kubla Khan’ and ‘Christabel’ (1797-1800)

[Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Selected Poetry, ed. H.J. Jackson: OUP 1999]

Introductory Lecture:

A reading of Romantic Ruins focussing on the role played by Plagiarism and Paratext

Further Reading :

McFarland, Thomas, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Modalities of Fragmentation (1981).

Genette, Gérard: Paratexts. Thresholds of interpretation (1997).

Week 4

Seminar: Romantic

Week 5

Lecture (DA)

VIII. Victorian

Set Text:

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman (1891)

[Eds. Penny Boumelha, Simon Gatrell, Juliet Grindle: OUP 2008]

Introductory Lecture:

A Cultural Materialist reading of the classic Nineteenth-century Novel

Further Reading :

Raymond Williams, The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence (1970).

Week 6

Seminar : Victorian

Week 7

Lecture (DA)

IX. Modernist

Set Text:

T.S. Eliot, Sweeney Agonistes: An Aristophanic Melodrama (1922-1932)

[Photocopies to be provided.]

Introductory Lecture:

Performance Criticism: an interpretation of the Modernist project in poetry

Further Reading :

Eliot, T.S., The Sacred Wood, 1920.

Eliot, T.S., On Poetry and Poets, 1957.

Aston, E. and G. Savona, Theatre as Sign-System:  A Semiotics of Text & Performance, (1991).

Week 8

Seminar: Modernist

Week 9

Lecture (tbc)

X. Post-Modernist

Set Text:

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)

Introductory Lecture:

Postmodernist Critiques of Historiographical Metafiction.

Further Reading :

Linda Hutcheon, 'Freedom through Artifice: The French Lieutenant's Woman' in Narcissistic Narrative: the metafictional paradox (1980)

Linda Hutcheon, 'Historiographic Metafiction' in Mark Currie (ed.) Metafiction (1995)

Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism (1989);

Patricia Waugh, Metafiction (1984)

Week 10.

Seminar: Postmodernist

Week 11.

Lecture- Review (DA)

XI. The End

Review Lecture

Final lecture summing up everything covered by the module; providing feedback, and preparing students for the final enquiry-based project.

Assessment 3.

Over Easter and the next six weeks – the Assessment Period – of Semester 2, students produce a 2500-word enquiry-based project, a critical introduction to any of the texts featured on the paper, modelled on the critical introductions to be found in Penguin Classics or Oxford World Classics.

Due: 12pm Wednesday 18^th May 2011

Week 12

Revision

Week 13

Exams/ Assessment

Week 14

Exams/ Assessment

Week 15

Exams Assessment

Alternating: one-hour lecture / two-hour seminar.

Essential Reading - Primary Material

The Book of Margery Kempe (c.1438)

[pp.366-379 in The Norton Anthology, Seventh Ed. Vol.1.]

The self-fashioning of Sir Walter Raleigh

[pp.878-888 in The Norton Anthology, Seventh Ed. Vol.1.]

Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677-1681),

AVAILABLE ONLINE: Chadwyck-Healey, Cambridge 1996

Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712)

[pp.2505-2577 in The Norton Anthology, Seventh Ed., Vol. 1.]

Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771)

[Ed. Jeremy Lewis, Penguin 2008]

S.T. Coleridge, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, ‘Kubla Khan’ and ‘Christabel’ (1797-1800)

[Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Selected Poetry, ed. H.J. Jackson: OUP 1999]

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman (1891)

[Eds. Penny Boumelha, Simon Gatrell, Juliet Grindle: OUP 2008]

T.S. Eliot, Sweeney Agonistes: An Aristophanic Melodrama (1922-1932)

[Photocopies to be provided.]

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)

Background / Reference Material

Abrams, M.H., ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1:

The Middle Ages through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century: Eighth Edition (2006).

Abrams, M.H. and Harpham, Geoffrey, A Glossary of Literary Terms: Ninth Edition (2009).

Alexander, Michael, A History of English Literature (2009).

Carroll, Robert and Prickett, Stephen, eds., The Bible: Authorized King James Version (1611).

Davies, Norman , The Isles: A History (1999).

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso), Metamorphoses, trans. Mary M. Innes (2006).

(Medieval)

Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (1994), available online at:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=D4dIp-beXK8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=

lynn +staley+margery+kempe&ots=VABGSG_nkK&sig=u0vL6lbfL_CyDBCaCC2XBoy

BARA#PPP1,M1

Diane Watt, Secretaries of God (1997), available online at:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aqjeOQ-M2XcC&oi=fnd&pg=PP8&dq=diane+watt+medieval&ots=gQf-bo26JW&sig=2UsTYVGz98s8ef4L1Mcmdzz9aCs#PPP7,M1

Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury, Penny Summerfield, eds. Feminism and autobiography: texts, theories, methods (2000), available online at: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/surreyuniv/Doc?id=5004101

Also, see the following website: www.luminarium.org/medlit/margery.htm

(Renaissance)

Brannigan, John, New Historicism and Cultural materialism (1998),

Greenblatt, Stephen J., Renaissance self-fashioning : from More to Shakespeare, Chicago (1984).

Waller, Gary F., English poetry of the sixteenth century (1993).

(Restoration)

Wiseman, Susan. Aphra Behn (2007).

Hughes, Derek and Todd, Janet, The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn (2004)

(Augustan)

Fergusson, Rebecca. "'Quick as Her Eyes, and as Unfix'd as Those': Objectification and Seeing in Pope's Rape of the Lock." Critical Survey 4.2 (1992) 140-6.

Gurr, Elizabeth: Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock, Oxford University Press, 2007

(Enlightenment)

Altman, Janet Gurkin: Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (1982).

Kauffman, Linda S: Discourses of Desire (1986) and Special Delivery (1992).

Favret, Mary: Romantic Correspondence (1993)

Gilroy , Amanda & Verhoeven, W. M., Epistolary Histories: Letters, Fiction, Culture, 2001.

(Romanticism)

McFarland, Thomas, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Modalities of Fragmentation (1981).

Genette, Gérard: Paratexts. Thresholds of interpretation (1997).

(Victorian)

Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Classes in (1844); AVAILABLE ONLINE.

Raymond Williams, The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence (1970).

Sheila Smith, The Other Nation: The Poor in English Novels of the 1840s and 1850s (1980).

(Modernism)

Aston, E. and G. Savona, Theatre as Sign-System:  A Semiotics of Text & Performance, (1991).

Eliot, T.S., The Sacred Wood, 1920.

Eliot, T.S., On Poetry and Poets, 1957.

(Post-modernism)

Linda Hutcheon, 'Freedom through Artifice: The French Lieutenant's Woman' in Narcissistic Narrative: the metafictional paradox (1980)

Linda Hutcheon, 'Historiographic Metafiction' in Mark Currie (ed.) Metafiction (1995)

Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism (1989);

Patricia Waugh, Metafiction (1984)

5 July 2010 JG