Module Information

Module Identifier
EN22120
Module Title
Place and Self
Academic Year
2020/2021
Co-ordinator
Semester
Semester 2
Other Staff

Course Delivery

 

Assessment

Due to Covid-19 students should refer to the module Blackboard pages for assessment details

Assessment Type Assessment length / details Proportion
Semester Exam 3 Hours   Examination paper  50%
Semester Assessment 2500 word essay  50%
Supplementary Assessment Resubmit failed or missing 2500 word essay  50%
Supplementary Exam 3 Hours   Resit missed of failed exam  50%

Learning Outcomes

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

1. Discuss a selection of long form texts identifying their influence upon the development of literature in English.

2. Identify and discuss key formal characteristics linked to the respective historical contexts.

3. Analyse the representation of self and placec in relation to narrative technique, genre, and context.

4. Understand the ways in which contemporary theoretical concepts can be applied to texts from the pre-1900 period.

5. Devise and demonstrate strategies for constructing analytical arguments focusing on long texts.

Aims

  • To provide students with knowledge and understanding of five key texts from the English canon.
  • To augment students' engagement with texts studied elsewhere on their course that appropriate, reference and reflect these texts.
  • To enable students to demonstrate knowledge of key texts that future employers might expect an English / English & Creative Writing graduate to have encountered.

Brief description

The module looks at 5 texts that are key to the development of literature in English and that feed into other modules that study texts influenced by these literary precursors. The module is designed to give students the time and space in which to study these difficult texts in detail, paying attention to context, genre, close reading and thematic connections. It is unique to other modules in that the number of texts studied is approximately half of the usual load, this is to give students the time to read texts that would usually be excluded from the curriculum due to length. The module focuses on the representation of self and place as a thread that draws these texts together, but is not intended to suggest a linear development; instead the module will approach this topic by positioning each text as a cultural /historical snapshot in ongoing narratives of literary constructions of identity.

Content

Week 1
Lecture 1: Module introduction, aims, objective and themes
Seminar 1: Strategies for reading long texts

Week 2
Lecture 2: Reading Milton's Paradise Lost
Seminar 2: Place and Character in Paradise Lost

Week 3
Lecture 3: The English Epic and John Milton
Seminar 3: Form and structure in Paradise Lost

Week 4
Lecture 4: The Early English Novel and Daniel Defoe
Seminar 4: Narrative Strategies in Robinson Crusoe

Week 5
Lecture 5: Crusoe in Context: Colonialism, Identity and Politics
Seminar 5: Ways of reading Crusoe's colonial endeavour

Week 6
Lecture 6: The Lyrical Self and The Prelude
Seminar 6: The Prelude as Autobiography

Week 7
Lecture 7: Touring the Sublime in The Prelude
Seminar 7: Romanticism and Place in The Prelude

Week 8
Lecture 8: The Realist Novel
Seminar 8: Narrative Strategies in Middlemarch

Week 9
Lecture 9: Narrating the Provincial
Seminar 9: Place and Identity in Middlemarch

Week 10
Lecture 10: From Milton to Eliot
Seminar 10: Middlemarch and module roundup

Module Skills

Skills Type Skills details
Application of Number N/A
Communication Written: By construction of critical argument in coursework essays and exams Oral: Through class discussion, small group exercises, and seminar presentations [assessed formatively, not summatively]
Improving own Learning and Performance Through reflection on feedback
Information Technology By using word-processing packages; using AberLearn Blackboard and other e-resources to research and access course documents and other materials; by submitting assignments via Turnitin
Personal Development and Career planning Through critical self-reflection and the development of transferable ICT, communication and research skills
Problem solving By evaluative analysis and the use of critical skills
Research skills By directed and independent research; by synthesizing information in an evaluative critical argument
Subject Specific Skills Through the reading, writing and researching skills involved in the interrogation of literary texts, and the conceptual/theoretical analysis of works of imaginative literature in relation to a range of other non-literary texts
Team work Through group work in seminars

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 5