Module Information

Module Identifier
EN37820
Module Title
Forms of Children's Narrative Prose
Academic Year
2017/2018
Co-ordinator
Semester
Semester 1

Course Delivery

Delivery Type Delivery length / details
Seminar 10 x 2 Hour Seminars
 

Assessment

Assessment Type Assessment length / details Proportion
Semester Assessment Essay Submission  1 x 2500 word essay  60%
Semester Exam 8 Hours   Oral Presentation  Oral presentation - 1 full day needed for rehearsal and 1 full day for exam. Please schedule at least 4 days apart, not longer than 7 days apart. Please schedule final exam in last week.  40%
Supplementary Assessment Resubmit any failed elements  In the event of failure in the essay assignment, an essay on a new topic is to be submitted. In the event of failure in the oral presentation element, a 15 minute written script on a new topic, written as if for delivery, with accompanying visual aids, to be submitted.  100%

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this module students should be able to:

Demonstrate a critical understanding of the generic, historical and cultural contexts of the texts studied on the moudle.

Demonstrate an ability to analyse the texts coherently in terms of the appropriate critical approaches offered on the module.

Produce informed and well-argued written work that seeks to discuss the texts with refeence to their generic, historical and/or cultural contexts and relevant theoretical and/or other debates.

Demonstrate through oral presentation a critical understanding of the themes, forms and contexts of selected children's narratives.

Aims

The module will add diversification to the portfolio of options within the department.

Brief description

In The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), Carter G. Woodson asserts that 'there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom'. By suggesting the formative influence of children's culture on social relations, Woodson highlights an idea that courses through the body of children's literature. Whether writing in the nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first centuries, authors infuse texts with the hope that through childhood, that potent period in the individual's development, sensibilities can be transformed. Telling stories to a young audience can become the conduit for social and political change. A primary factor that distinguishes children's literature from adult literature is its complexly layered audience, for children's literature reaches various adult mediators as well as child readers. Children's literature also becomes a particularly intense site of ideological and political contest. Reversals of power in particular have always had special force in works for children. This module examines the uniqueness of children's literature, from classic realist texts to contemporary fantasy, and explores the thematic crossover between adult and child literature, and the forms of children's literature in which identity-formation takes centre stage, such as fictional and non-fictional autobiography, coming of age stories and the bildungsroman.

Content

The module is structured as 10 x 2 hour seminars, which will address the themes of the course as they arise.

Seminars:

1. Stories, fairy-tale and the tradition of children's literature: selections from Perrault.

2. Classic Fantasy: C.S Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

3. Classic Realist Fiction: L. M. Montogomery, Anne of Green Gables

4. Classic Realist Fiction: Frances Hodson Burnett, The Secret Garden.

5. Animal Stories: Richard Adams, Watership Down

6. Animal Stories: selections from Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book.

7, High Fantasy and Domestic Fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit

8. High Fantasy and Domestic Fantasy: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

9. Autobiography for children: Judith Kerr, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, and selections from Hi-Li Liang, Red Scarf Girl.

10.ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Module Skills

Skills Type Skills details
Application of Number Not applicable
Communication Written: sustain an arguement for written work. Listen effectively and make coherent oral contrubutions to seminars. Oral presentation.
Improving own Learning and Performance Through independent reading and research
Information Technology Not applicable
Personal Development and Career planning Develop awareness of personal skills.
Problem solving Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of bodies of ideas and critical arguments pertaining to children's literatures, including identity formation, trauma and the role of narrators; Construct a rational argument to a critical problem; undertake critical or evaluative work.
Research skills Understand a range of research methods. Plan and carry out an analytical piece of writing. Produce suitably academically referenced and structured work.
Subject Specific Skills Use appropriate critical and/or evaluative skills in preenting a written argument.
Team work Play an active part in group activities in the seminar workshop.

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 6