ENGL100: Literature in Time : Continuity and Change

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only 
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 10 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 5 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 5 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 20 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 10 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 10 ECTS Credits

Course Description

This course introduces you to some of the most vital debates in English Studies via a study of an English literary tradition that is constantly being rewritten and challenged, especially in the multicultural, postmodern era of the late twentieth century and beyond. By concentrating on poetry from the late sixteenth century to the present, you will learn about the rich canonical tradition and how each generation of writers has responded to it. You will consider some explicit rewritings of classic texts (for example, a literary reworking of Hamlet or the Victorian novel or of the narrative of the Fall in the Bible), in order to raise issues about what the canon excludes or occludes. Your study of selected plays, short stories and novels in addition to the poetry will broaden your sense of a literary tradition, and introduce you to the practice of close analytical reading of these genres too. As you study, the course will introduce you to some major theoretical approaches and instil some of the essential study skills you will need for your undergraduate programme at Lancaster. By the end of this course, you will have read some of the most celebrated texts in the English language, as well as learning about exciting innovations in contemporary literary theory and practical criticism.

The first term looks at the development of English poetry from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. It seeks to develop skills of close literary analysis and also to give a broader historical picture of the rise of a national literary tradition in the Renaissance and its disintegration in the Modernist period.

The second term moves forward and concentrates on the energy and diversity of contemporary writing. A range of literary genres is covered (poetry, drama, the novel), and attention is given to working-class women, black and Irish writers as well as mainstream English authors. The course also includes a Study Skills component and an introduction to some of the general theoretical issues of reading and interpretation. It is taught by means of two lectures and one seminar a week.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of the course, you will have acquired a range of knowledge and skills as outlined under these three main headings:

LITERARY TRADITIONS AND GENRES

• Increased familiarity with forms of poetry: including ballad, sonnet, couplet, dramatic monologue, free verse forms, concrete poetry (including work on metre).
• Increased awareness of how to read dramatic texts.
• Increased awareness of the novel form.
• Understanding of shorter prose forms (short story, C17th pamphlets, essays).
• An awareness of literary periods/groupings: e.g. 'Renaissance'; 'Metaphysicals'; 'Augustan'; 'Romantics'; 'Victorian'; 'Modernist'; 'Postmodern'; 'Other literatures in English'.

ISSUES

• Awareness of the literary tradition as existing in a process of continuous change in which rewriting and intertextuality are key features.
• Awareness of the canon as selective and the politically charged notions of "value".
• An understanding that the relationship between text, author and reader is not transparent or one directional.
• An awareness of history as discursively constructed and literature as a key element because of its emotive power.
• An understanding of reality as discursively constructed, and texts of all kinds as part of this process.
• An increased awareness of literature as a means of creating a national identity.

SKILLS

• How to read large quantities of text perceptively.
• How to construct an essay argument.
• How to research within the library [and on the web].
• How to construct a bibliography / present work according to scholarly conventions (in line with the English Literature Style Sheet).
• How to use critical writing.
• How to discuss metre and form in verse.

Outline Syllabus

This course introduces you to some of the most vital debates in English Studies via a study of an English literary tradition that is constantly being rewritten and challenged, especially in the multicultural, postmodern era of the late twentieth century and beyond. By concentrating on poetry from the late sixteenth century to the present, you will learn about the rich canonical tradition and how each generation of writers has responded to it, raising questions about what the canon of 'classic texts' excludes or occludes. Study of selected plays, films, short stories and novels in addition to the poetry will develops the practice of close analytical reading of these genres too.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

ENGL101: World Literature

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Terms only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course –  10 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only – 5 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only – 5 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course – 20 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only – 10 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only – 10 ECTS Credits

Course Description

ENGL101 World Literature pushes beyond English as a national literature to situate the study of literature in a global context. The focus is threefold. First, we consider the transformation of canonical English texts in different contexts and media. Second, we start to explore a world literary tradition, examining major texts and stories from outside of the English ‘canon’ including ones originally produced in languages other than English (which we read in translation). Third, we read contemporary world literature in English and in translation. While ENGL100 provides a critical grounding in literary study in English, ENGL101 encourages you to widen literary and critical horizons, and to develop your critical autonomy.

The course will encourage you to become more self-aware and self-reflective as a writer and critic. It will do this by asking you to write not only for assessments, but regularly and self-critically, so you can begin to interrogate your own assumptions and define your own critical standpoint. There is no examination on ENGL101. Instead, there are two coursework essays, which will enable you to experiment with critical form and practice if you wish, and a long project at the end, preceded by a short proposal which you will produce in consultation with your tutor. This long project will enable an in-depth study of texts and issues investigated on the course.

Educational Aims

The course is designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of literature as a worldwide phenomenon that is transformed as it moves across different cultures, languages, and media. ENGL101 will give you a solid grounding in world literatures in English and literatures in translation. On successful completion of the course, you will have developed an understanding of a wide range of issues relating to the cultural processes of translation, transmission, and transcultural writing. Through your own experiences of reading, re-reading, writing, and rewriting you will have become more reflective readers and writers.

On successful completion of the course you will have:

1. a good knowledge of a wide selection of world literature in English
2. a good understanding of the relationship between literature and place
3. a good understanding of how different media create fictional worlds
4. a well-developed facility for making connections between literary texts across time and space
5. a well-developed facility for close reading a wide range of literature
6. developed a more self-conscious critical practice
7. a good knowledge of the relationship between writing and re-writing
8. a more developed understanding of the practices and processes of writing and criticism
9. developed oral and written communication skills in individual and group contexts
10. developed an understanding of the skills and tools of individual study and research, and be able to work towards more independent modes of analysis

Assessment Proportions

• 100% Coursework

ENGL201: The Theory and Practice of Criticism

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course. 
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

What is literature? Who decides? How should we read literary texts? To what extent is the meaning of a text decided by the author, the reader, history or culture? Why does literary criticism still have value? To address these fundamental questions, ENGL 201 introduces students to a range of key concepts in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The module will ask us to re-think familiar concepts such as writing and history, and will extend literary criticism beyond its traditional limits to encompass concepts such as animals, biopolitics and neoliberalism. The module will enable students to deploy theoretical terms and concepts in their own acts of reading, and its overall aim is to make students more rigorous, sophisticated and inventive in their responses to literary and cultural texts.

Educational Aims

You should:

• have developed a wide knowledge of the various contemporary approaches to literary interpretation
• be able to participate knowledgeably in debates over the value and purpose of criticism
• be familiar with the differences between traditional and theoretical assumptions about literature
• be familiar with the debates between different theoretical schools of thought
• be able to deploy theoretical ideas and vocabulary as part of the detailed analysis of literary texts
• have become more sophisticated and discerning in your use of secondary material
• have developed your skills of written and oral communication

Outline Syllabus

Lecturers will assign weekly reading associated with each theoretical concept. As preparatory secondary reading, we recommend: Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Routledge, 2016).

Assessment Proportions

• 1 x 1,500-word essay (20%)

• 1 x group oral presentation (30%)

• 1 x 4,000-word project (50%)

ENGL202: Late Medieval to Early Modern Literature

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course. 
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

Designed to take up and develop Part One's engagement with pre-1700 texts, this course will take us from the late medieval period's interest in spiritual and earthly travel to the episodes of power, revolution and restitution that characterised Stuart rule (1603-1688). During this time, English culture saw upheavals in religion that were accompanied by shifts in discourses of (among others) politics, sex, science and education. Late Medieval to Early Modern Literature will examine the literature of change from the late fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, from John Mandeville's and Margery Kempe's marvellous journeys through Europe, Northern Africa, Asia and the Holy Land, to the brilliant and edgy theatre of Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, and the writings of revolutionaries such as John Milton and monarchist libertines like Aphra Behn.

Our readings will mainly be focused on topics designed to provide us with ingress into the literature, culture and historical vitality of the period. To this end, the texts are gathered under four headings: 'Love, Sex and Death', 'Court, Country, City', 'Power and Politics' and 'Heaven and Hell'. We will be reading cross-sections from works by many authors to explore these themes from as many angles as possible. We will consider the continuities across a range of different primary texts but we will also be keen to observe and analyse differences.

Educational Aims

By the end of the course, successful students will have developed:

• a good knowledge of the literature of the period in its various types and genres, an understanding of significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and a capacity to read these texts closely;
• an awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts;
• independent critical responses and perspectives in general, and a capacity to make appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism and theory;
• their existing skills (both oral and written) in the analysis of ideas, presentation of arguments and well-expressed handling of complex issues.

Outline Syllabus

Term 1

• *The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse and Prose (Broadview Press)
• Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella [on Moodle]
• Anonymous, Mankind (TEAMS online)
• Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (New Mermaids)
• Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (New Mermaids)
• The Booke of Margery Kempe (TEAMS online)
• Aphra Behn, Oroonoko and Other Writings (Oxford World Classics) [The Widow Ranter]

Term 2

In addition to The Broadview Anthology, which we will continue to use:

• Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin)
• John Mandeville, The Book of Marvels and Travels (TEAMS online)
• John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. John Leonard (Penguin)
• John Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (New Mermaids)

For further reading, see the course Moodle site.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%

Assessment: 1x 1,000-word in-class test as take-home essay (10%); 1 x 2,000-word essay (30%); 1 x 2.5 hours final examination (60%).

ENGL203: Victorian Literature

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

The years of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901) saw great social, political and cultural change. New technologies and scientific developments altered the ways in which Victorians thought about themselves and their environment, and the literature of the period responded to these changes in all sorts of ways. Examining a wide range of Victorian literature, including novels, short stories, poetry, drama and non-fiction prose, the course is structured around four major themes: ‘Personal Experience and Perspective,’ ‘Socio-Political Change,’ ‘Realism, Idealism and Fantasy,’ and ‘Falls and Losses.’ The aim of the course is to explore and interrogate the complexity of 'Victorian' attitudes within and across these areas.

Educational Aims

By the end of the course, successful students will have developed skills in the close analysis of literary texts and the development of critical argumentation, learned to use secondary sources for essays and exams, and begun to grasp the complex relationships between literary works and their historical contexts.

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts (Provisional):

The Norton Anthology of English Literature Tenth Edition: The Victorian Age. (Authors covered include Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Matthew Arnold. The anthology will feature in both terms.)

• Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
• George Eliot, Middlemarch
• Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
• Roger Luckhurst (ed.), Late Victorian Gothic Tales
• Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
• Elizabeth Gaskell, Lois the Witch
• Charlotte Brontë, Villette
• Robert Browning, “Mr Sludge the Medium”

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%

Assessment: 1 x close reading exercise (10%); 1 x 2,000-word essay (30%); 1 x 2½ hours final examination (60%).

ENGL204: American Literature to 1900

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 7.5  ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

This course explores how American Literature has evolved from its colonial origins, with particular emphasis on key figures of the nineteenth century. What we call 'American Literature' and how we define America and 'the American experience' depends on who is writing and to whom. We shall encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience and a great range of writing in form and style (don't expect the poetic and novelistic forms you are used to in British literature). The course will be broadly thematic in its approach, aiming to build up through recurring themes, images, questions and stylistic features, an increasingly complex picture of the literature created mostly by English-speaking Americans.

The seminar programme has been designed to make use of the tremendous range of material offered by the Norton as well as focusing on certain important authors and texts. So sometimes we shall be reading a number of shorter selections on a particular theme, and at other times we'll spend one or two whole seminars on a single text or writer. The early seminars on the course are meant to introduce a number of important issues that will give you a framework for later texts (their relevance will become increasingly clear), but the texts are also important in their own right though they may seem strange to you. You're encouraged to use your Norton and read beyond the texts selected for the seminars, especially when writing your essays. Read the headnotes for every author whose work you're asked to read for a seminar.

Educational Aims

By the end of the module, you should:

• have developed a good knowledge of the literature of the period in its various types and genres, an understanding of significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and a capacity to read these texts closely
• demonstrate an awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are reflected in the literary texts
• develop an understanding of the problems of defining American literature and the contested nature of ‘America’ as a concept
• have developed independent critical responses and perspectives in general and a capacity to make appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism and theory
• have developed your existing skills (both oral and written) in the analysis of ideas, presentation of arguments and well-expressed handling of complex issues

Outline Syllabus

We shall be mainly using The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volumes A and B, Ninth Edition. In addition, you'll need to have copies of Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and James, The Turn of the Screw (the Norton editions of these novels are to be recommended but other editions are fine). For an extensive bibliography with recommended secondary reading, please see the course MOODLE site.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%

Assessment: 1 x 1,500 word essay (10%); 1 x 2,000-word essay (30%); 1 x 2.5 hours final examination (60%).

ENGL207: British Romanticism

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

This course is divided into key thematic areas across the two terms: Revolution; The Self; Politics and Poetics; and the Gothic. We will begin by examining revolutionary writing of the Romantic period, including the poetry of Anna Barbauld, William Blake, and William Wordsworth, and the prose of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft. We will then consider ideas of the self in the poetry of Charlotte Smith and Letitia Landon, Lord Byron's Manfred, and the labouring-class writing of John Clare. We also examine the relationship between politics and poetics for the second-generation poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and then, the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and the orientalism of S. T. Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey. Finally, the course will turn its attention to the popular literary movement of 'Gothic' which emerges during the Romantic period, exploring its manifestation in a range of texts including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The course aims to give students a sense of the diverse range of writers in this exciting and energetic literary period. We will use the close knowledge of key texts to tackle some of the wider, more abstract ideas such as: nature, the imagination, and the sublime. We will also consider literary ideas within a broader social, historical and philosophical context looking at the importance of the Romantic period for establishing core freedoms and human rights that we take for granted today.

Educational Aims

Learning Outcomes:

• a detailed knowledge of core Romantic texts
• an ability to make connections between writers and genres
• an historical overview of the period
• a sense of the main theoretical approaches to Romanticism and how to apply them
• an understanding of key poetic and philosophical ideas in the period
• confidence in articulating ideas and presenting them orally

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts:

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Period, vol. D, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al (2012). For poetry by Barbauld, Byron, Clare, Coleridge, Keats, Landon, Shelley, Wordsworth, and some of the prose texts too.

Book Length Texts Required for Term 1

• Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman, in Mary and the Wrongs of Woman, ed. Gary Kelly (Oxford World Classics edition)

Book Length Texts Required for Term 2

• Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, ed. Marilyn Butler(Penguin Classics edition)
• Joanna Baillie, De Montfort, in Plays of the Passions (https://archive.org/stream/dramaticpoetical00bail/dramaticpoetical00bail_djvu.txt)
• Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, ed. Sara Salih (London: Penguin, 2000)
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818 Text, ed. Marilyn Butler (Oxford World Classics Edition)

N.B. Also: Romanticism: A Source Book, ed. Simon Bainbridge (2008) – not a set text, but contains useful additional contexts, especially for ‘Women’ and ‘Revolution’ and Sharon Ruston, Romanticism: An Introduction (London: Continuum, 2007).

Assessment Proportions

Assessment:

• 1 x ‘take home’ close reading paper (10%)
• 1 x 2,000-word essay (30%)
• 1 x 2.5 hour exam (60%)

ENGL208: Literature, Film, and Media

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have completed an Intro level English Literature module.
  • This is a strict quota module, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

This course surveys formal, generic, historical, cultural, narrative, and theoretical relationships between literature and film across a range of periods, genres, and cultures, paying particular attention to the practice and analysis of literary film adaptation.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of the module, students should have a firm grasp of the basic history, theory, and genres of literature's relationship to film, be able to address both formal and cultural aspects of literary film adaptation, and understand how adaptations function as creative-critical and interpretative works. Students will develop skills in interdisciplinary analysis and in writing across disciplines. In the practical component, they will grapple with issues in the practice as well as the analysis of interdisciplinary relations.

Outline Syllabus

Required reading/viewing

Students should view set films/television shows and read set texts before the sessions that discuss them. Set books are available for discounted purchase from the university bookstore and in the library; most of our set films are available via the library's Box of Broadcasts; the library also has DVD copies. Students may purchase films on DVD, as they purchase books, or access them via various online services.

Set Texts

• Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice (free e-texts widely available)
• Berman, Shari Springer and Robert Pulcini, American Splendor screenplay (on MOODLE)
• Briggs, Raymond, Ethel and Ernest
• Carroll, Lewis, Alice's adventures in Wonderland (free e-texts widely available)
• Cocteau, Jean, 'Poetry and films' (on MOODLE)
• Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness (free e-texts widely available)
• Dick, Philip K., 'The Minority Report' (on MOODLE)
• Dix, Andrew, Beginning film studies (second edition)
• Harris, Thomas, The Silence of the Lambs
• Lovecraft, Arthur, 'Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad' (on MOODLE)
• Pekar, Harvey, any of his American Splendor comics
• Proulx, Annie, 'Brokeback Mountain' (on MOODLE)
• Shakespeare, William, Romeo and Juliet (free e-texts widely available)
• Stoker, Bram, Dracula (free e-texts widely available)

Other required and optional readings will be posted on MOODLE.

Set Films

• Adaptation, 2002
• Alice in Wonderland, 1951 (Disney)
• Alice in Wonderland, 2012 (dir. Tim Burton)
• American Splendor, 2003
• Apocalypse Now, 1979
• Brokeback Mountain, 2005
• Ethel and Ernest, 2016
• La Belle et la Bête, 1946
• Minority Report, 2002
• Pride and Prejudice, 1940
• Ramleela, 2013
• Rear Window, 1954
• The Silence of the Lambs, 1991
• What We do in the Shadows, 2014
• Whistle and I’ll Come to You, 1968 (Miller) and 2010 (Emmony)
• William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, 1996 (Luhrmann)

Other required and optional viewing will be posted on MOODLE.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Full Year Indicative:

• Michaelmas Term: 1500-word essay due Friday at noon of week 10 (25% of the module mark)
• Lent Term: creative project portfolio due Monday at noon of week 17 (25% of the module mark)
• Summer Term: a creative project accompanied by a 3000-word critical essay due Tuesday at noon of Week 21 (creative project 25%; critical essay 25%).

ENGL306: Shakespeare

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.  
• US Credits:
  • Full Year - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.

Course Description

Course Outline:

Ben Jonson claimed of Shakespeare ‘he was not of an age but for all time.’ This course examines Shakespearean drama and poetry in its own time: as a platform in which early modern debates about agency and government, family, national identity, were put into play, and in relation to how we perceive these issues now. The stage was and is a place in which questions of gender, class, race, gain immediacy through the bodies and voices of actors. By examining texts from across Shakespeare’s career, we will explore their power to shape thoughts and feelings in their own age and in ours. We will consider Shakespeare’s manipulation of genre (poetry, comedy, history, tragedy and romance) and the ways the texts make active use of language (verse, prose, rhyme, rhythm) and theatrical languages (costume, stage positions) to generate meaning. The course will consider how, in the past and in the present, Shakespeare’s texts exploit the emotional and political possibilities of poetry and drama

Educational Aims

On successful completion of the course, you should have:

• acquired an enriched understanding of Shakespeare’s historical context and a grasp of the ways in which this shaped his plays.
• have a perception of the place of the Shakespearean theatre in Elizabethan and Jacobean politics and its importance as the sight of struggle over interpretations of the state, the family, gender and identity.
• acquired an informed idea of the actual design and conventions of Shakespeare’s playhouse, and an awareness of how these determined his texts.
• become familiar with contemporary critical debates about the plays, and to be prepared to apply theoretical concepts to analysis of them.
• developed an appreciation of how Shakespeare’s drama continues to be a global force in the present, especially through its representation in cinematic forms.

Outline Syllabus

Set Text:

We recommend a properly annotated edition of the Complete Works such as the RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works, ed. Bate and Rasmussen; The Arden Shakespeare, Complete Works ed. Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan and Richard Proudfoot or The Norton Shakespeare: International Student Edition, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al., 3rd edition (W.W. Norton, 2015) Vacation Reading: The full list of plays for next year's syllabus will be finalised in the summer in the hope that we can see some in performance. Vacation reading should start with the following, which will be included: As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV Part 1, Troilus and Cressida, The Tempest. For further information, see Professor Alison Findlay (County Main B94)

Assessment Proportions

• Assessment:

• 1 x 3,000-word essay (40%);

• 1 x scripted presentation (1,500 words) 10%;

and either

• 1 x 3 hour final examination (50%)

or

• Project (50%)

ENGL308: Contemporary Literature in English

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only 
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.  
• US Credits:
  • Full Year - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent Summer Only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent Summer Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.

Course Description

Course Outline:

ENGL 308 Contemporary Literatures focuses on different kinds of (postmodern, postcolonial/world, Gothic, post-9/11, feminist/queer, experimental) contemporary literature. The course consolidates student knowledge of ways in which writers redress notions of 'English literature', including ways in which they both respond to and stimulate critical theory. Beginning in the 1950s, we consider the explosion of new literatures from the decolonising/newly postcolonial world and the rise of new literary forms in the post-war period. The course also emphasises work from the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, foregrounding, at all stages, English literature in its international dimensions: we read texts from Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and Australasia, as well as from multicultural and devolved Britain. Recurrent themes include borders, margins, haunting, apocalypse, rewriting, migration and metamorphosis; these terms also reflect formal qualities of the texts studied (i.e. aspects of genre, structure and style). The course considers inter-generic forms (e.g. the graphic novel) as well as a range of more standard literary genres (novels; short stories; poetry), highlighting literary experimentation and critically reflecting on notions of 'the contemporary'.

Educational Aims

This module aims to:

• enhance students' breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding of the development and variety of contemporary literature in English, from 1960 to the present moment
• enhance students' knowledge of the relationship between the works studied and contemporary social, historical, political, cultural and linguistic contexts
• enhance students' knowledge of literary voices from erstwhile margins (geographical; ethnic; gendered; sexual; classed; generic; etc)
• help students acquire breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding of the development and variety of literature in English
• encourage students to relate works studied to relevant social, historical, political, cultural and linguistic contexts
• to develop students' capacity critically to engage the idea of ‘English literature’ and to consider the creative and critical impact of its erstwhile margins (geographical; ethnic; gendered; sexual; classed; generic; etc)
• develop students' knowledge of, and the ability judiciously to deploy, critical and theoretical frameworks

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts – in order of study

Generally, any edition of set texts is acceptable. It is strongly recommended that you tackle the longer and more challenging novels over University breaks/ISWs: Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Roy’s God of Small Things, Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching, and Watchmen are particularly challenging.

• Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958)
• Caribbean poetry – a selection will be made available on Moodle
• Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)
• Janet Frame, Faces in the Water (1961)
• Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory (1984)
• Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (2009)
• Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places (2000)
• Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
• J M Coetzee, Disgrace (1999)
• Samuel Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956)
• Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching (2009)
• Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes (2012)
• Alan Moore, & D. Gibbons, Watchmen (1987)
• Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014)
• Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003)
• Sally Rooney, Normal People (2018)

Assessment Proportions

• Essay: 3,000-words (40%)
• Writing Exercise: 1,500 words max (10%)
• Exam: Term 3 (50%)

ENGL309: Modernism - Then and Since

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course 
• US Credits:
  • Full Year - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent Summer Only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full year - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Only - 7.5  ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have significant previous studies in English Literature

Course Description

This course will trace the evolution of English (including American) literature in a period of social and political change stretching from the Boer War to the Cold War, from the Edwardian era to the Space Age. It will explore the dynamics of literary history, focusing on the strain of radical experimentation that characterizes so much twentieth-century writing. We will examine the ways in which modernist writers from Eliot to Woolf renewed and re-shaped the language of literature; we shall consider how some representative post-modernist writers (Beckett and Pynchon) addressed the problem of how to follow their formidable literary predecessors. The first term's work considers writers working in, and sometimes against, the British context (including New Zealand and Ireland); the second term considers those working in, and sometimes against, the American context. Given the transnational nature of Modernism, this in turn begs the question of whether primary allegiance was owed to nation, or to art.

Educational Aims

Students who successfully complete the course will acquire detailed knowledge of the evolution of literature from the early twentieth century to the emergence of postmodernism.

Outline Syllabus

Primary Texts (in order of study)

NB. With the exception of just the four asterisked titles, all texts can be found, if you wish, online or on Moodle.

• Imagist poetry
• T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
• D. H. Lawrence, 'St Mawr'
• Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
• Katherine Mansfield, short stories
• James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• W. B. Yeats, selected poems
• *Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
• Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• *Ernest Hemingway, Fiesta
• Robert Frost, selected poems
• Selected poetry and prose of the Harlem Renaissance
• William Carlos Williams, selected poems
• Wallace Stevens, selected poems
• *John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
• *Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 50% (1500 word exercise 10%; 3000 word essay: 40%)
• Exam: 50%

ENGL320: Contemporary Middle Eastern Literatures

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota module, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of Middle Eastern literature in English and translation as one of the most exciting new areas of world literature. The region has experienced, so far this century, the 'war on terror', revolutions and wintery aftermaths, civil wars, sectarian violence, the rise and fall of 'Islamic State', and an ongoing refugee crisis. On this course, we will explore some of the shapes and styles of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, the concerns and aspirations that drive it, and its growing international visibility. We will study novels, short stories, and new genres from the region, in English and in translation. No prior knowledge is needed.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of this module students will be able to...

• demonstrate knowledge of ways in which contemporary creative literature illuminates specific contexts and the wider region of the Middle East
• demonstrate awareness of some of the social, cultural and political contexts at stake in the work studied;
• demonstrate knowledge of, and be able judicially to deploy, relevant critical/theoretical paradigms, for example those emerging from postcolonial and world literary studies
• consider, in an informed way, the production, translation (where relevant) and reception of contemporary Middle Eastern literature originally produced in a range of languages (notably English, Arabic and French)
• demonstrate a greater understanding of how creative work participates in the construction of local, national, regional and/or transnational communities
• demonstrate detailed knowledge of the primary material and of thematic and stylistic connections and differences between texts on the course

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts

Primary Texts (in order of study)

Place and Space (weeks 2-4)

• Alaa al-Aswany, The Yacoubian Building, trans. Humphrey Davies (2002/2004)
• Atiq Rahimi, The Patience Stone, trans. Polly McLean (2008/2010)
• The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Fiction, ed. by Fereshteh Ahmadi (2019)

Mobility (weeks 5-7)

• [On Moodle] Leila Aboulela, 'The Museum', from Coloured Lights (2001) and Hassan Blasim, 'The Truck to Berlin', from The Madman of Freedom Square, trans. Jonathan Wright (2009)
• Laila Lalami, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005)

Violence, Trauma, Affect (week 8)

• Adania Shibli, Touch, trans. Paula Haydar (2010)

Experiments in Genre (weeks 9-10)

• Basma Abdel Aziz, The Queue, trans. Elisabeth Jacquette (2016)
• Palestine+100, ed. Basma Ghalayini (2019)

Preliminary Secondary Reading List

• Arabic Literature and Translation, https://Arablit.org
• Anna Ball and Karim Mattar (eds), The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (Edinburgh UP, 2018)
• Nouri Gana (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English (Edinburgh UP, 2015)
• Wail S. Hassan, 'Postcolonial Theory and Modern Arabic Literature: Horizons of Application', Journal of Arabic Literature 33:1 (2002): 45-64
• M.E. McMillan, From the First World War to the Arab Spring: What's Really Happening in the Modern Middle East? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
• Lindsey Moore, Narrating Postcolonial Arab Nations: Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine (Routledge, 2017)
• Geoffrey Nash, Writing Muslim Identity (Continuum, 2011)
• Paul Starkey, Modern Arabic Literature (Edinburgh UP, 2006)
• David Tresilian, A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature (Saqi, 2008)

For further information see Dr Lindsey Moore, B103 County Main Queries to Lindsey in person or by email L.C.Moore@lancaster.ac.uk

Assessment Proportions

Assessment:

• Blog entries: Students upload 2 in advance of allocated seminars and can revise these for submission by the end of week 8 of the course: 1000 words total, 20% of total assessment.
• Long Essay: 3,500 words, 80%.

ENGL323: Medieval Theatre: Drama Before Shakespeare

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms Only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

At a time when life was viewed as a constant struggle between good and evil within the human soul, how was the inner self conceived? Furthermore, when public life was a type of performance in itself, how did people publicly enact their identities? And how did those private and public identities function in such a rigidly hierarchical society? With an emphasis on close critical readings, this course aims to explore medieval identities by looking at manifestations of self in literature and drama; it will examine and challenge distinctions between public and private, questioning the concept of subjectivity in this period, and consider moments of personal crisis. As well as looking at the role of performance in everyday life and organised drama, we will study the creation of narrative voices and personas in literary texts, and interrogate the interrelationship of text, 'voice' and performance. The course also sets aside seminar time to develop close reading skills and build familiarity with Middle English language.

Educational Aims

Learning Outcomes:

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• a range of literature and drama of the medieval period and the skills to closely, critically and comparatively analyse a diverse range of primary sources
• the ways in which medieval literature and drama present selfhood and identity grounded in theories of performance, identity, and the public and private spheres
• awareness of the historical context in which these texts were written
• increased research skills for independent study such as working with texts in performance, using online resources and developing language and close reading skills

Outline Syllabus

Essential:

• The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Medieval Period, eds. by Roy Liuzza and Claire Waters, 3^rd Edition (Broadview Press, 2014)

Optional:

• William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the ‘B’ Text, ed. By A. V. C. Schmidt, Second Edition (Everyman Press, 1995)
• The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, ed. and trans. by Kevin Brownlee and Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997)

N.B. Extracts from the two 'optional' texts above, as well as John Lydgate, Henry VI's Triumphal Entry into London, Geoffrey Chaucer, House of Fame, and The Castle of Perseverance will be provided electronically on Moodle.

Preparatory Reading:

As well as starting on some of the primary reading over summer, it is recommended that you do some secondary reading to introduce yourself to medieval literature and culture if this is a new area of study. The introduction and 'contexts' sections of the course set text The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Medieval Period, 3rd Edition (Broadview Press, 2014) are a good place to start. Other useful guides include The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English, eds. by Treharne and Walker (Oxford University Press, 2010) and, for the Middle Ages more specifically, A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350-c.1500 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) both of which are available online via the library. If you would like more guidance on this or any other aspect of the course, please do contact me via email (c.egan2@lancaster.ac.uk).

Assessment Proportions

• Assessment: 1 x 1,000-word Critical Commentary Exercise (20%); 1 x 3,500-word Essay (80%)

ENGL324: Urban Gothic in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Fiction

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: I recommend reading as many of the novels as you can, but especially Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor and Jeff Vandermeer’s Finch, since those are the longest texts. 

Course Description

This course explores twentieth and twenty-first century writing about the city that uses Gothic generic conventions and modalities. Cities are ostensibly places of shelter and refuge, but these sites have also always been ambiguous. Gothic is characterised by a concern with vulnerable bodies within confining environments, subjected to threatening forces both visible and intangible. The built environments of Gothic are often plastic and mutable, the setting an animate, changeable, and malevolent force. We will explore the 'architectural uncanny' and the 'urban sublime', and consider how traditional elements of Gothic fiction are pressed to new ends in response to changing sensory, social and political contexts of urban space and place. We will ask how these texts imagine sensory geographies of the city, how they unsettle the binary between urban and rural, how they represent assemblages of the human and non-human, posthuman biotechnological transformations of the body, and concerns over environmental catastrophe, structural inequality, histories of trauma and gendered dimensions of urban experience. We will work with a range of critical approaches to urban gothic, drawing from literary criticism, Gothic studies, cultural geography and sociology of urban space. While most sources will be textual, these will be complemented with reference to screen media, fine art, graphic novel and UrbEx photography.

Outline Syllabus

Course Structure

• Week 1 – Post-apocalypse at the turn of the century: H. G. Wells, War in the Air (1908)
• Week 2 – The urban uncanny of the Second World War: Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943)
• Week 3 – Mid-twentieth-century eco-horror: John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids (1951)
• Week 4 – Psychogeography and flânerie: Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (1985)
• Week 5 – Cyberpunk: Blade Runner, dir. Ridley Scott, Final Cut (Warner, 2008), and William Gibson, ‘Burning Chrome’ (1982)

[First assignment due by noon on Friday Week 5]

• Week 6 – Independent Study Week.
• Week 7 – Simulation and Illusion: Dark City, dir. Alex Proyas (New Line Cinema, 1998), and Benôit Peeters and François Schuiten, 'The Fugitive' (1989), reprinted in Samaris and the Mysteries of Pâhry (2017), pp. 69-77.
• Week 8 – Haunted cities: trauma and memory: Patrick McGrath, Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (2005)
• Week 9 – Biopunk and the urban weird: Jeff Vandermeer, Finch (2009)

[Final essay due: Monday Week 10, at 12 noon]

• Week 10 – Salvage: adaptation and future directions for urban Gothic[and in-class 3-minute presentations]

Set Texts

Students will be asked to purchase the novels listed below. Any edition is welcome.

• Ackroyd, Peter, Hawksmoor (1985)
• Gibson, William, ‘Burning Chrome’ (1982)
• Greene, Graham, The Ministry of Fear (1943)
• McGrath, Patrick, Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (2005)
• Vandermeer, Jeff, Finch (2009)
• Wells, H. G., War in the Air (1908)
• Wyndham, John, The Day of the Triffids (1951)

The following text will be digitised and available on Moodle, along with a range of secondary reading pertinent to each week:

• Peeters, Benôit and François Schuiten, 'The Fugitive' (1989), reprinted in Samaris and the Mysteries of Pâhry (2017), pp. 69-77.

We will also watch the following films:

• Blade Runner, dir. Ridley Scott, Final Cut (Warner, 2008).
• Dark City, dir. Alex Proyas (New Line Cinema, 1998)

Assessment Proportions

• 1 x 1,000 word written exercise (20%, due Week 15, Friday 12 noon)
• 1 x 3,000 word essay (70%, due Monday Week 20, 12 noon; this may optionally include a creative component for people who wish it)
• 3-minute informal class presentation in Week 20 (10%).

ENGL331: Jane Austen

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:   Must have significant previous studies in English Literature This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

This module will give students the opportunity to study all the major works of one of the most celebrated novelists in English literary history. It will combine close attention to the stylistic textures and narrative strategies of Jane Austen's fiction with broader consideration of key themes and preoccupations such as friendship, desire, matchmaking, snobbery, illness, resistance, transgression and secrecy.

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts

• Emma
• Mansfield Park
• Northanger Abbey
• Persuasion
• Pride and Prejudice
• Sense and Sensibility

Vacation Reading

Students may find it useful to read Emma, which is Austen's longest and most intricate novel, before the course gets underway.

Week-by-week summary

1. Introductions
2. Northanger Abbey
3. Sense and Sensibility
4. Pride and Prejudice
5. Mansfield Park (I)
6. Independent study week
7. Mansfield Park (II)
8. Emma (I)
9. Emma (II)
10. Persuasion

Secondary reading

• Butler, Marilyn, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas
• Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen
• Johnson, Claudia, Jane Austen : Women, Politics, and the Novel
• Kirkham, Margaret, Jane Austen, Feminism, and Fiction
• Miller, D.A., Jane Austen, Or the Secret of Style
• Tanner, Tony, Jane Austen
• Wiltshire, John, The Hidden Jane Austen
• Woolf, Virginia, 'Jane Austen'

You are particularly encouraged to make use of anthologies of critical writings on Austen, such as the Macmillan casebook series, where you'll be able to sample a range of critical responses to her work. For further information see Dr Michael Greaney (County Main B98)

Assessment Proportions

• 100% Coursework

Assessment: 1000-word essay (20%), 3500-word essay (80%)

ENGL332: Postcolonial Environments

• Terms Taught: Lent/Summer Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

It's an illuminating fact that the very phrase 'climate change' was first deployed by colonising thinkers who wanted to transform local environments to serve their purposes. Today, it is clearer than ever that the catastrophic effects of global climate change will be most keenly felt by the global poor, especially in colonised or postcolonial spaces. This module explores how postcolonial writing from a variety of locations grapples with environmental change, crisis and collapse, especially the looming spectres of the so-called 'Anthropocene' (a buzzword in contemporary theory that we'll interrogate in our discussions). Our aim throughout will be to explore how postcolonial literature and film can enlarge or transform our environmental imaginaries, not only critiquing or mourning environmental destruction but also hatching alternatives to the destructive ontologies that have shaped our present. We'll read established and emerging voices from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, and these primary readings will be supported by readings in postcolonial and environmental theory. Students taking this module will extend their knowledge of postcolonial and environmental literatures and participate in the debates informing the vibrant interdisciplinary field of the Environmental Humanities.

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts (indicative)

• Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape
• J M Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K
• Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach
• Nnedi Orokafor, Lagoon
• Monique Roffey, The Mermaid of the Black Conch
• Romesh Gunesekera, Noon Tide Toll

Vacation Reading

Please read the Introduction to Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, available as an online resource via the Library catalogue (44pp – if you are pressed for time with deadlines, please at least read pp. 1-16).

Assessment Proportions

• Short mid-term essay: 1000 words, 20%.
• Long Essay: 3500 words, 80%.

ENGL365: Science Fiction in Literature and Film

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students.

Course Description

Course Outline:

This course will trace the development of science fiction (SF) in literature and film, providing an insight into the conventions of the genre and, in particular, how the key themes of the science fiction genre have been successfully adapted for the screen. Texts have been chosen from a range of historical periods to enable a consideration of the cultural and historical contexts in which key science fiction texts were produced, and how this effects their development. The course will analyse in detail the formal and generic characteristics of the science fiction novel and short story, and will provide an introduction to the visual aspects of the science fiction film. The course will be organised through a thematic concentration on the themes of time and space travel. It will encompass narratives of time travel, evolution, temporal dislocation and also stories that formally incorporate atemporality. It will consider journeys, encounters, species and ontologies. It will offer discussions about questions of human subjectivity, gender, race, transcendence, love and loss. The module will also constitute an ongoing investigation of the relationship between science fiction film and 'literary' SF texts, considering both how the genre is represented through the cinematic form and what happens in terms of narrative structure, plot and characterisation when presented in an audiovisual format.

Educational Aims

On satisfactory completion of the course the students will:

• have an understanding of the place of narrative and theme within science fiction in film and literature, and will be able to link the texts/films they have studied to key theoretical concepts.

• understand the relationship of science fiction films and texts to specific historical contexts.
• have learned to extend their understanding by applying concepts to films and texts not specifically studied in seminars
• produce a piece of writing that synthesizes the information offered in the weekly seminars with the students’ own comprehension of the narratives.

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts:

• H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
• Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)
• Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019)
• Nnedi Okorafor, Binti (2015)
• Ted Chiang, 'Story of Your Life' (1999)

Set Films:

• La Jetée (1962)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
• Twelve Monkeys (1997)
• Arrival (2016)

For further reading, see the course Moodle site.

Vacation Reading:

Please read as much as possible from the above list in preparation for the course. I have chosen shorter texts wherever possible. At the very least, you should read the Wells and Butler novels on this list before the course starts.

Seminar Topics:

• Week 1: Introduction – What is science fiction? (Moodle texts)

• Week 2: Beginnings I – Text: Wells, The Time Machine (1895) (plus selected film clips)

• Week 3: Travelling Back – Text: Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)

• Week 4: Loops – Texts: Chris Marker (dir.), La Jetée (1962) and Terry Gilliam (dir.), Twelve Monkeys (1997)

• Week 5: Timelines – Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019)

• Week 6: Independent Study Week

• Week 7: The Journey Out – Text: Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

• Week 8: – Text: Nnedi Okorafor, Binti (2015)

• Week 9: Contact – Text: Jonathan Frakes (dir.), Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

• Week 10: Beginnings II – Texts: Ted Chiang, ‘Story of Your Life’ (1999) and Denis Villeneuve (dir.), Arrival (2016)

Further critical reading

Science Fiction

• Aldiss, Brian W. (1973) Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson)
• Baker, Brian (2014), Science Fiction: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (London: Palgrave Macmillan)
• Booker, M. Keith and Anne-Marie Thomas (2009) The Science Fiction Handbook (Chichester, Oxford and Walden MA: Wiley-Blackwell)
• Bould, Mark, and Sherryl Vint (2011) The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction (London: Routledge)

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Assessment: 1 x 1,000 word essay/ seminar paper (20%). This will be an analysis of a film sequence or literary text corresponding to the week’s text – students to choose / be allocated particular weeks to write on (to be posted up on Moodle site in time for class discussions); 1 x essay (3,500 words) (80%).

ENGL367: The Byron-Shelley Circle

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students.

Course Description

Course Outline:

This course examines the work of three of the great writers of the Romantic period, the poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, and the novelist Mary Shelley. Famously, these three writers lived and worked together during the summer of 1816, an episode that produced two of the dominant myths of modern literature – Frankenstein (in Mary Shelley's novel) and the Vampire (in a story based on Byron by another member of the group, John Polidori) – both of which we will examine. Throughout their careers these writers were engaged in a creative and critical conversation with each other that addressed major themes including: conceptions of the heroic; the possibilities of political change; literary, scientific and biological creation; the East; transgressive love; gender roles; and the Gothic. This course will provide an opportunity to study in detail these writers' works and to consider them within their historical, cultural and intellectual contexts.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of this course students will have:

• acquired an understanding of the writings of members of the Byron-Shelley circle and of the relations between these writings
• identified key themes in the writings of the Byron-Shelley circle and explored different treatments of them
• investigated the uses of literary forms in the writings of the Byron-Shelley circle
• related the literature to historical, cultural, and literary contexts
• gained a sense of the nature of the contemporary critique of the members and writings of the Byron-Shelley circle
• considered a range of critical and theoretical approaches to the texts
• developed skills of close reading and analysis
• developed communication and writings skills through seminar participation and completion of assessments

Outline Syllabus

Byron:

• Byron: The Major Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann (Oxford U.P., 2008)

Percy Shelley:

• Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat (Norton, 2002)

Mary Shelley:

• Frankenstein, ed. Maurice Hindle (Penguin, 1992)
• The Last Man, ed. Morton D. Paley (Oxford World’s Classics, 1994)

Seminar Topics:

• Week 1 – Introduction
• Week 2 – The Byronic Hero, Orientalism and Gender I: Byron, The Giaour
• Week 3 – The Byronic Hero, Orientalism and Gender II: Byron, Don Juan, cantos V & VI
• Week 4 – Percy Shelley: Selected Poems: ‘Mont Blanc’, ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’, ‘Ozymandias’, ‘Ode to the West Wind’, ‘To a Sky-Lark’, ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, ‘Sonnet: England in 1819
• Week 5 – The Romantic Prometheus I: Byron, ‘Prometheus’; Percy Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
• Week 6 – Independent Study Week1,500 word close reading exercise (to be submitted 12pm, Monday Week 7)
• Week 7 – The Romantic Prometheus II: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
• Week 8 – Romantic Italy: Byron, Beppo; Percy Shelley, ‘Lines Written among the Euganean Hills’
• Week 9 – Mary Shelley: The Last Man
• Week 10 – The Contemporary Critique of Romanticism: Percy Shelley, Julian and Maddalo; John Polidori, ‘The Vampyre’.

Assessment Proportions

Assessment:

• 1 x 1,000-word close reading exercise (20%)
• 1 x 3,500-word essay (80%)

ENGL375: 21st Century Theory: Literature, Culture, Criticism

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

In 21st Century Theory, we will build upon the general introduction to critical and cultural theory given on ENGL201 by focusing on one specific theme in contemporary theory: biopolitics. To explore biopolitics – or the politics of life itself – we will examine a selection of classic theoretical works by Michel Foucault, Georgio Agamben and others and then read them alongside some key literary and filmic texts from Martin Amis's Time's Arrow to the Batman Trilogy. This course will seek to address the following questions. What exactly is biopolitics? How have theorists, novelists and film-makers imagined such concepts as sovereign power, bare life, the state of exception and so on? To what extent might it be possible to resist the biopolitical hold over our political imaginary?

Educational Aims

On successful completion of this module students will be able to...

• demonstrate detailed knowledge of the primary material
• identify thematic and theoretical connections and differences between texts
• show some awareness of the cultural, historical and philosophical contexts in which the primary texts are situated Engage critically with key issues from the philosophy of technology (Aristotle, Heidegger and Stiegler)

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts:

• Martin Amis, Time's Arrow (London: Cape, 1991)
• Jodie Picoult, My Sister's Keeper (New York: Atria, 2004)
• Alfonso Cuarón (dir.) Children of Men (2006)
• Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Picador, 2006)
• Christopher Nolan (dir.) Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2008)
• Steve McQueen (dir.) Twelve Years A Slave (2013)

Secondary Texts:

• Agamben, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life trans. by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998)
• Boeve, Arne de, Narrative Care: Biopolitics and the Novel (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
• Campbell, Timothy and Adan Sitze eds. Biopolitics: A Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013)
• Cavarero, Adriana, Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence trans. by William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)
• Dillon, Michael and Reid, Julian, The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live (London: Routledge, 2009)
• Esposito, Roberto, Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life trans. by Zakiya Hanafi (London: Polity, 2011)
• Foucault, Michel, History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge trans. by Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1978)
• Foucault, Michel, ‘Society Must Be Defended’: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-6 trans. by David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003)
• Mbembe, Achille, ‘Necropolitics’ in Public Culture 15: 1 (2003), pp. 11-40
• Lemke, Thomas, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction (New York: NYU Press, 2011)
• Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political trans. by George Schwab (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007)
• Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (New York: Public Affairs, 2019)

Course structure

1. Introduction
2. Natality: Alfonso Cuarón (dir.) Children of Men (2006)
3. Biopower: Martin Amis, Time’s Arrow (1991)
4. Exception: Christopher Nolan (dir.) Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2008)
5. Homo Sacer: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005)
6. Reading Week
7. Manhunts: Steve McQueen (dir.) Twelve Years A Slave (2013)
8. Data: Dave Eggers, The Circle (2013)
9. Viruses: Marc Forster (dir.) World War Z (2013)
10. Messianism: Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Assessment: 1000-word exercise (20%) due Monday Week 7, term 2, 3500 word essay (80%) due Monday Week 2, term 3.

ENGL377: Literary Film Adaptations, Hollywood 1939

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term Only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

Film historians consider 1939 to be 'the greatest year in the history of Hollywood': in that year, 365 films were released and 80 million tickets sold. This module considers how literature and film interact and conflict in that year to construct mythologies of the American past and present in the context of the Great Depression and on the eve of the Second World War. The module also considers the context of Hollywood, the functions of motion picture palaces, American film's relationship to British literature, and more.

Educational Aims

By the end of the course, successful students will have developed:

• a good knowledge of the literary film adaptations of the period in its various types and genres, an understanding of significant kinds of connection and difference between literature and film, and a capacity to read these texts and films closely
• an awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts and films
• independent critical responses and perspectives in general, and a capacity to make appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism, historical information, and theory
• their existing skills (both oral and written) in the analysis of ideas, presentation of arguments, and well-expressed handling of complex issues

Set Texts

• John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937)
• Rudyard Kipling, 'Gunga Din' (1892); Soldiers Three (1888)
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1846)
• Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind (1936)
• Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz (1900)

See MOODLE for further required reading.

Set Films

• Of Mice and Men, dir. Lewis Milestone
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, dir. Frank Capra (based on an unpublished story by Lewis R. Foster, 'The Gentleman from Montana')
• Gunga Din, dir. George Stevens
• Wuthering Heights, dir. William Wyler
• Gone With the Wind, dir. Victor Fleming
• The Wizard of Oz, dir. Victor Fleming

Note: All of our films except for Of Mice and Men are available on Box of Broadcasts (via the LU Library).

Of Mice and Men is available on Kanopy, another streaming service you can access via the library. See MOODLE for further viewing suggestions.

Outline Syllabus

• John Steinbeck, Of mice and men (1937)
• Rudyard Kipling, ‘Gunga Din’ (1892); Soldiers three (1888)
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1846)
• Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the wind (1936)
• Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz (1900)
• See MOODLE for further required reading.

Set Films

• Of Mice and Men, dir. Lewis Milestone
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, dir. Frank Capra (based on an unpublished story by Lewis R. Foster, ‘The Gentleman from Montana’)
• Gunga Din, dir. George Stevens
• Wuthering Heights, dir. William Wyler
• Gone with the wind, dir. Victor Fleming
• The Wizard of Oz, dir. Victor Fleming

See MOODLE for further viewing suggestions.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Assessment: 1 x 3500-word critical essay (80%), 1 x 1000-word film poster analysis (20%)

ENGL378: Children in Horror Fiction and Film

• Terms Taught:
  • Lent / Summer Terms only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota module, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

This module will focus upon the motif of 'the child' within 20th and 21st century horror fiction and film. Students will expand upon key critical and theoretical skills and apply these skills to popular fiction and film adaptation, using the motif of the child as a focus for this. The module will also encourage students to interrogate texts from a range of theoretical perspectives such as cultural materialism, psychoanalysis, and feminism in order to reveal how and why representations of the child in the horror genre supply an important cultural, psychological, and political point of reference for literary studies.

More specifically, the module aims to explore the cultural significance of the motif of the child in horror fiction and film through analysis of themes such as innocence and evil, psychic powers, child abuse, parenting, technology and grief. We will analyse the process of adaptation from novel to film and examine how issues relating to gender are crucial to the horror genre. The module will develop in students a sophisticated ability to think critically and analytically about how an exploration of popular fiction and film can reveal deep cultural anxieties and fixations at a historical and psychological level.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:

• identify and comment on the cultural, political and psychological importance of the trope of the child in horror fiction and film
• relate key themes explored to gender issues
• apply key theoretical and critical skills to the texts discussed
• think critically about the ways in which adaptation from novel to film can ‘change’ a text

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts

• Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
• William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (1971)
• Daphne du Maurier, Don't Look Now (1973)
• Stephen King, The Shining (1977)
• Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (2002)

Set Films:

• The Bad Seed (1956), dir. Mervyn LeRoy
• The Innocents (1961), dir. Jack Clayton
• Don't Look Now (1973), dir. Nicholas Roeg
• The Exorcist (1973), dir. William Friedkin
• The Shining (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick
• The Ring (1998), dir. Hadeo Nakata and (2002), dir. Gore Verbinski
• The Sixth Sense (1999), dir. M. Night Shyamalan
• The Lovely Bones (2010), dir. Peter Jackson
• Hereditary (2018), dir. Ari Aster

Course Structure

Week 1 – 'The Bad Seed'? Introduction and The Bad Seed (1956), dir. Melvyn LeRoy

Week 2 – 'The Evil or Innocent Child': Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898) and film version The Innocents (1961), dir. Jack Clayton.

Week 3 – 'The Death of a Child': Daphne du Maurier, Don't Look Now (1970) and film version (1973), dir. Nicholas Roeg.

Week 4 – 'The Possessed Child': William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (1971) and film version (1973), dir. William Friedkin.

Week 5 – 'The Psychic Child': The Sixth Sense (1999), dir. M. Night Shyamalan.

Week 6 – Independent Study Week

Week 7 – 'The Abused Child and Imagination': Stephen King, The Shining (1977) and film version (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Week 8 – 'Children and Technology': Adaptations of Kojo Suzuki's novel, The Ring (1991). A comparison of the film version (1998) dir. Hadeo Nakata and (2002), dir. Gore Verbinski.

Week 9 – 'That Red Riding Hood Thing': Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (2002) and film version (2010) dir. Peter Jackson

Week 10 – Hereditary (2018), dir. Ari Aster

Assessment Proportions

• Exercise (1,000 words): 20%
• Essay (3,500 words): 80%

ENGL379: Performing Death, Desire and Gender

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have significant previous studies in English Literature. This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

How are acts of desire, murder, fake and 'real' deaths represented on stage in early modern drama and how are these experiences gendered? The module will explore these questions by focusing on performance. The performativity of gender, on stage and beyond, was materialised in the theatres of early modern England where boys played female roles, representing female desire, and often same-sex desire, at the same time. Modern films and productions of early modern plays create similar (and different) gender-effects. We will study texts by Marlowe, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ford, Middleton, Webster, Wroth using a mixture of discussion, analysis of films / productions and short practical explorations (such as getting the text 'on its feet'). The module will ask when and how can death be comic in performance? Does outlawed desire always lead to tragedy? How did drama help to shape human experiences of desire and violence? No previous experience of (or expertise in) acting is necessary but you will be required to think in terms of performance because the module will culminate in a series of short presentations and performances by the group.

Educational Aims

This module has the following Subject Specific aims:

• To enhance students’ understanding of Shakespearean drama and early modern theatre practices through a historicist examination of different dramatic forms (household entertainment, professional theatre script)
• To broaden student’s understanding of Shakespearean drama.
• To develop understanding of the historical, cultural and performance contexts of the texts.
• To enhance understanding of how desire, death and gender were understood in early modern culture and how these essential human experiences are represented in and managed by performance.
• To develop understanding of how stage representation serves to mediate human emotions of desire, experiences of death and to shape sexual identities and orientations.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Assessment: Presentation* with written record (1,000 words, 45%) and essay (2,500 words, 55%).

*Presentation: In small groups (normally two or three), you will stage an extract from one of the plays studied on the course as a mini 'performance'. It is important to remember that you are being assessed primarily as interpreters/investigators of the text rather than for your acting ability. The presentation will normally last no longer than 10 minutes, and it will be followed by an additional 5-10 minutes of discussion, including questions from the tutor and seminar group. The presentation will be accompanied by an individually-written record from each student. This will take the form of an extended prompt-book, giving details of the interpretation of the extract and its links to other parts of the play.

ENGL380: Between the Acts: Inter-War Writing, 1919-1939

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

The course will begin with writing that looks back to the First World War and end with writing that anticipates the Second World War. In between the students will explore and interrogate the inter-war 'moment' through close attention to a number of other texts. The course will focus on many of the great themes of the period such as exile, unemployment, Englishness, eugenics, militarisation, and political commitment, as well as many of the great cultural motifs of the period such as borders, radios, planes, cars, trains, cameras and telephones. Close attention will also be paid to many of the great intellectual debates of the period such as the nature of history, the role of the State in everyday life, and the place of literary experimentation in time of war. The course will not, though, be limited to what these texts are 'about' but will also attend to what these texts 'do'. In other words, we shall explore how inter-war writing both reflects the period and indeed participates in the period. The students will, then, be expected to understand the ways in which the texts under consideration exist not only 'between the acts' but are themselves acts – acts not only of mourning and warning but also agitation, provocation, resistance, despair, and even (therefore) hope.

Educational Aims

It is intended that by the end of the course the students will have acquired:

• detailed knowledge of inter-war writing
• a keen appreciation of how the history of the period bears upon literary texts
• a well-developed facility for close reading of inter-war writing

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts:

• Edith Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates (1918)*
• Arnold Bennett, The Pretty Lady (1918)*
• D.H. Lawrence, 'England, My England' (1921)*
• Katherine Mansfield, 'The Garden Party' (1922)*
• Nancy Cunard, Selected Poems [1921-1936] [will announce and provide poems nearer time]
• Rosamond Lehmann, The Weather in the Streets (1936)
• George Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier (1937)*
• Edward Upward, Journey to the Border (1938) [available as separate book or in collection called The Railway Accident and Other Stories]
• Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal (1938) [will provide scan]
• Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)*

NB: All texts available via Amazon (but please order early).

*Asterisked texts are available online.

Excellent introductions to the period:

• D. Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
• Graves and Hodges, The Long Weekend
• R. Hattersley, Borrowed Time: Britain Between the Wars
• R. Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars
• M. Pugh, We Danced all Night
• D.J. Taylor, Bright Young People
• Plus endless terrific YouTube documentaries on both the writers and the period.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Assessment: 1 x 1,000-word exercise (20%) and a 3,500 word essay (80%)

ENGL385: Literature and the Visual Arts

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

What is the role of literature in an age that is dominated by images? Is it possible to 'read' a painting? Can an artist interpret a poem in paint? This course addresses the complex relationship between literature and the visual arts, tracing key debates in aesthetic theory from Romanticism to the twenty-first century. Literature and the Visual Arts will begin with an introduction to key critical terms and an examination of the painting-inspired poetry of, for example, John Keats and W. H. Auden. Subsequent seminars will explore the work of figures such as William Blake, John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites who blur the distinction between literature and art; the revival of the Pop Art tradition and postmodern narrative practices; and, finally, the fusion of word and image in graphic novels including Art Spiegelman's Maus and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. The module will draw on the unique resources of the University's Ruskin Library and rare book archive.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of this modules, you should be able to:

• demonstrate a detailed understanding of the historic relationship between literature and the visual arts
• show an advanced awareness of narrative style and genre in ?image texts' and other media inspired by the visual arts
• display an awareness of the philosophical, cultural and social contexts that inform texts studied on the course
• construct clear and critically informed interpretations of literary texts that engage with visual media and visual texts that engage with literature

Outline Syllabus

• Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, trans. by J. A. Underwood (London: Penguin, 2008)
• Blake, William, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [Facsimile edition], ed. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (Oxford: OUP, 1975)
• Birch, Dinah, (ed.) John Ruskin: Selected Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
• Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis (London: Vintage, 2008) [Complete text]
• Smith, Ali, Autumn (London: Penguin, 2017)
• Spiegelman, Art, The Complete MAUS (London: Penguin, 2003)

Other seminar material will be made available as handouts and via Moodle

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

ENGL388: Bible and Literature

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term Only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students.

Course Description

Course Outline:

In this module we will look at a selection of biblical texts alongside literary works that appropriate, rewrite and subvert them. We will be thinking about the Bible as literature; the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and literature; and what the Bible does to a literary text. By the end of the course you should be more familiar and knowledgeable about the Bible, its genres, ideas and narratives, and be able to appreciate its literary qualities. You will develop skills of exploring the relation between a literary text and the biblical text it invokes: in what ways does awareness of the Bible provoke more profound readings of a literary text? Does rewriting refine or subvert the Bible? Throughout the course we will also have in focus issues related to reading, interpretation and adaptation that will be relevant to your wider studies.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of the course, you will be able to

• demonstrate an understanding of the character, genres and variety of texts in the Bible

• show a detailed knowledge of a selection of biblical books

• display an understanding of different literary approaches to biblical texts

• show an awareness of the differences between devotional and secular uses of the Bible in literary works

• display an awareness of a range of critical and theoretical approaches to the use of the Bible in literature and the different reasons why writers invoke the Bible

Outline Syllabus

Biblical works:

Please read from the Bible widely. Specific texts we will discuss are: Genesis (especially chapters 1-4 and 30); 1 and 2 Samuel (especially chapters 11 and 12); Job; Song of Songs; Matthew 26-27. Please read these in the King James Version (these are available cheaply in second hand books shops and are identifiable by a preface ‘To the Most High and Mighty Prince James’).

Literary works:

• Margaret Attwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
• William Blake, Illustrations to the Book of Job
• Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve
• Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (preferred: Norton Critical edition, 1986)
• The Tree of Life, Dir. By Terence Mallick
• John Milton, Paradise Lost, books 4 and 9
• Mark Twain, The Diary of Adam and Eve (preferred edition: Hesperus, 2002)

A selection of poetry invoking the Passion narrative including – Poems available on Moodle: John Donne, 'Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward', Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'The Windhover', Christina Rossetti, 'Good Friday'; Emily Dickinson, '"Remember me" implored the Thief'; Sylvia Plath, 'Mary's Song'; Geoffrey Hill, 'Canticle for Good Friday'.

Assessment Proportions

• Essay(s): 100%

Assessment: 1 x 1,000-word close reading exercise (20%) and 1x 3,500-word essay (80%).

ENGL389: Women Writers of Britain and America

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students.

Course Description

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf famously asks, 'what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister?' and goes on to explore the obstacles to literary success that she might have encountered. This module follows Woolf's lead by seeking to redress the historical marginalisation of women writers in the English literary canon through an exploration of how women have come to writing at different historical moments, what they have chosen to write, and how. A selection of texts from the 17th century through to the 21st, encompassing autobiographical forms, the novel, poetry and drama, are used to examine relationships between gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity and literary production, and to explore continuities, connections and disparities between representations of female experience. The module is historical in terms of both the range of primary texts it addresses, and in the history of feminist theoretical and critical approaches it provides. It is structured generically, in order to facilitate formal analysis of the texts under consideration.

Educational Aims

By the end of the course, successful students will have developed:

• an informed knowledge and understanding of women's writing from different genres and from a range of historical periods
• their ability to contextualise literary material and its production and reception
• an understanding of genre theory
• an awareness of different theoretical and critical approaches, including an awareness of their historical specificity and political currency
• their ability to make appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism and theory in assessed work

Outline Syllabus

Set texts will include:

• Jane Austen, Persuasion (London: 1818)
• Pat Barker, Regeneration (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990)
• Vera Brittan, Chronicle of Youth: Great War Diary 1913-1917 ed. Alan Bishop (London: Phoenix, 2000) [Moodle]
• Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, The Convent of Pleasure (1668) [Moodle]
• Carol Ann Duffy, The World’s Wife (London: Picador, 2000/revised edition 2010)
• Jackie Kay, The Adoption Papers (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1991)
• Toni Morrison, Beloved (London: Chatto and Windus,1987)
• Dorothy Osborne, Letters (1652-3) [Moodle]
• Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (London: Virago, 2006)
• Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (London: Hogarth Press, 1929)
• Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere Journals (1800-3) [Moodle]

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%
• Assessment: Short in-class individual presentation/submission: 20%; 3,500-word essay: 80%

ENGL391: Premodern Gothic

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline

'[T]he Gothic', as Nick Groom argues, 'was not simply a reaction to the Enlightenment, and the rise of the Gothic novel is part of a longer history' (Groom, 2012, p.xiv). In coining the term Premodern Gothic, this innovative half-unit considers some of the ways in which a range of generically diverse texts produced in England between c.1450 and 1600 engage with Gothic tropes and sensibilities – e.g. ghosts, vampires, castles, darkness, magic, terror and wonder - before 'the rise of the Gothic novel'.

Educational Aims

On completion of the module, students should have…

• engaged closely with a range of generically distinct forms of premodern writing and their relationship to Gothic tropes and sensibilities
• acquired an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of the texts studied on the module
• engaged with digital research techniques and methodologies through the use of Early English Books Online

Outline Syllabus

Students will be asked to purchase Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Broadview, 1992), Medieval Ghost Stories (Boydell and Brewer, 2006), Titus Andronicus (any edition), Hamlet (any edition) and The Faerie Queene (Penguin, 1979). The other primary texts will be offered as scanned texts via MOODLE and links to scholarly electronic archives. Students will be expected to bring hard and/or e-copies of all set texts to the weekly seminars.

Set Texts:

• Anon., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Broadview, 1992)
• Anon., Medieval Ghost Stories, ed by Andrew Joynes (Boydell and Brewer, 2006)
• William Baldwin, Beware the Cat [EEBO: online]
• Thomas Nashe, Terrors of the Night [EEBO: online]
• William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (any edition)
• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (any edition)
• Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed by Thomas P. Roche (Penguin, 1979)
• Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Project Gutenberg; online)

Vacation Reading:

I recommend that you read Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto before Week 1.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework 100%

Assessment: 1 x 1,500-word essay (30%) 1 x 3000 word essay (70%)