Brief description
This module falls into three sections - the three mega-genres of poetry, drama, prose fiction. Within each section, the aims and the rationale for choice of texts are slightly different. In the poetry section the emphasis is on the variety possible within the mega-genre, with the oral-formulaic Sir Orfeo at one extreme, and the linguistic compression of Shakespeare's sonnets at the other. In the drama section, one genre is chosen - comedy, and within that indeed comedy of manners - and the focus is on the way the genre is adapted and recreated through time, potentially opening out towards questions of the relation betwen history and literature, and towards issues such as intertextuality. In the prose fiction section, one genre is again chosen - the uncanny - but here, very broadly speaken, the genre is defined by content rather than by form. The module aims to use these three sections to challenge and develop students' understanding of literary forms. Such knowledge will be relevant not only to English students in Part 2, but other art subjects.