Module Information
Course Delivery
| Delivery Type | Delivery length / details |
|---|---|
| Lecture | 20 x 1 Hour Lectures |
| Seminar | 10 x 1 Hour Seminars |
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Semester Assessment | 2000 word essay | 30% |
| Semester Assessment | Summary and Bibliography 300-word summary of a critical article/extract plus brief bibliography (c4 items, correctly) referenced plus c200 words on how students found and chose these sources | 20% |
| Semester Exam | 2 Hours 2-hour examination | 50% |
| Supplementary Assessment | Students who fail the module will be required to make good any missing elements and/or resubmit any failed coursework assignments (writing on a fresh topic), and/or sit a supplementary exam paper | |
| Supplementary Exam | 2 Hours Re-sit Exam Re-sit examination | 100% |
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
1. Demonstrate critical and interpretative skills appropriate to Level 1 and deploy an appropriate critical vocabulary
2. Discuss critically issues of literary language, form and genre
3. Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the literary text and appropriate cultural contexts
4. Demonstrate a basic competence in skills of searching for and correctly referencing appropriate critical material
5. Demonstrate a basic competence in summarising critical arguments in own words
Brief description
The 4 key texts of this module, ranging from the Romantic period through Victorian writing to the twentieth century, serve as suggestive "test cases" in relation to which the student will negotiate the following issues: How might a reader overcome the difficulties involved in encountering a text for the first time? How does a reader decide on appropriate strategies of reading? How does one select and shape detail in order to build a reading of a text? Which aspects of these texts might a reader identify as linguistically/structurally/culturally significant? How have other critics interpreted these texts? How have these texts been re-read, and therefore re-focused, in a number of different forms? Thus the module brings into focus issues of literary language, form, genre and structure; the relation between a text and other cultural co-texts; and the contested place a text occupies within the context of critical debate. It provides the First-year student with a critical vocabulary adequate to the task. Students on the module will be provided with a number of resources including a range of co-texts - excerpts from critical articles and biographies, reviews, and a variety of cultural documents and visual material. The module also integrates workshop "Skills" sessions at appropriate junctures in the module's development. The seminars and accompanying lectures exist in meaningful dialogue.
Content
1. Introduction to Encountering Texts
S.T. Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
2. Language and Initial Frameworks/Interpretations
3. Literary and Historical Contextualization/Conmteporary Re-Readings
4. Skills Workshop Session - Practice in summarising critical arguments and correct procedures of citation with particular focus on the first assignment
Edgar Allan Poe, selected short stories from Selected Tales
5. Language, Genre and the Supernatural
6. Theoretical Frames for Reading: Psychobiography
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
7. Strategies for Reading Long Fiction
8. The Condition of England Novel
9. Workshop Session - Practice in planning an argument and in framing appropriate introductions and conclusions, keyed in to the second assignment
W.B. Yeats, selected poems
10. Lyric Poetry and Cultural Allusion
11. Poetry and Politics
Lectures
1. Introduction to Encountering Texts
2. Language and Form
3. Drawing out Meanings
4. Historical Locations
5. Revisionings: Ecocriticism
6. Research Skills: Using the Library, locating materials - 1
7. Research Skills: Using the Library, locating materials - 2
8. Reading Short Fiction
9. Genre and the Gothic
10. Text and the Author
11. Cultural Reimaginings
12. Encountering Novels
13. Reading Class
14. Gender and Authorship
15. Education and the Bildungroman
16. Assessment Tips: Structuring an Essay
17. Assessment Tips: Dealing with Secondary Sources
18. Reading Lyric Poetry
19. Negotiating Cultural Reference
20. Poetry and Politics
21. Mythologies
22. Preparing for the examination
Module Skills
| Skills Type | Skills details |
|---|---|
| Application of Number | n/a |
| Communication | (written) By developing a sustained critical argument (oral) Through group discussions and seminar presentations (n/a) |
| Improving own Learning and Performance | Through independent research and reading |
| Information Technology | By using word-processing packages and making use of Blackboard and other e-resources to research and access course documents and other materials |
| Personal Development and Career planning | Through increased critical self-relection and the development of transferable, ICT, communication and research skills |
| Problem solving | By evaluative analysis and critical skills |
| Research skills | By independent research and synthesizing information in an evaluative argument |
| Subject Specific Skills | Through the reading, writing and researching skills involved in the interrogation of literary texts, and the conceptual/theoretical analysis of works of imaginative literature in relation to a range of other non-literary texts |
| Team work | Through group work in seminars and/or through the preparation of group presentations for seminars |
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 4