Brief description

Content

These sessions focus on ways in which Marxist theories of history have been extended or adapted by New Historicist critics. Taking Romantic responses to the massacre of 'Peterloo' as one of our case studies, we explore how poems like Keats's 'To Autumn' can be said either to allude to, or seek to elude, contemporary events.

Primary Reading
Poems by Keats, 'Barrry Cornwall', Percey Shelley; copies of contemporary reviews of these authors will be provided
Jerome McGann, 'Keats and the Historical Method in Literary Criticism', Modern Language Notes, 94 (May 1979) 988-1032
Nicholas Roe, chapter on 'To Autumn' in Keats and the Culture of Dissent (Clarendon Press 1997)

Secondary Reading
E P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1968)
Robert Walmsley, Peterloo: The Case Reopened (MUP 1969)
H Aram Veeser (ed), The New Historicism (London: Routledge, 1989)

SESSION 7: Race and National Identities
Tutor: Christoph Lindner

It is now virtually impossible to study literature without considering the racial or national identity of writers of both literature and criticism. We will consider some of the key contemporary debates through looking at four representative essays. Issues explored will include: debates about race and national identity; links between "first" and "third" world cultures; arguments concerning cosmopolitan and particularism; and the relationship between literature and culture.

Primary Reading
Tzvetan Todorov, "'Race', Writing and Culture", in "'Race', Writing, Difference", ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1986)
Henry Louis Gates Jr., 'Talkin' That Talk", in '"Race", Writing, Difference", ed Henry Louis Gates Jr (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1986)
Homi Bhaba "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse", in "The Location of Culture" by Homi Bhaba (London: Routledge 1994)
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, "The American Indian Fiction Writer: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, The Third World, and First Nation Sovereignty" in "Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice" by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

Secondary Reading
Henry Louis Gates Jr, ed, "'Race', Writing, Difference", (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1986)

SESSION 8: Feminist Literary Histories
Tutor: Iona Italia

Session considering the strengths and weaknesses of various feminist approaches to the construction of literary histories and the traditions of women's writing. We will also discuss the revaluations of genres within women's writing with particular reference to romance.

Primary Reading
Virginia Woolf, "A Room of One's Own" (1928)
Daphne du Maurier, "Rebecca" (1938)

Secondary Reading
Margaret Ezell, "Writing Women's Literary History" (John Hopkins University Press 1993)
Ellen Moers, "Literary Women" (The Women's Press 1978
Adrienne Rich "When We Dead Awaken": Writing as Revision, "On Lies Secrets and Silence": Selected Prose 1996-1978 (W W Norton 1979)
Elaine Showalter, "A Literature of Their Own" (Revised Edition, Virago 1982)
Janet Todd, "Feminist Literary History" (Polity 1988)

SESSION 9: Reading Texts in Contexts: Historicist Approaches to Literature
Tutor: Claire Jowitt

The advantages and limitations of historicist approaches to literature. We shall be discussing the contribution of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism and of more recent historicist scholarship to literary studies. We shall investigate how major and minor events affect the writing of texts and their reception by multiple audiences. The chief objective will be to compare the different kinds of historical evidence available in particular historical periods and to consider what uses might be made of such evidence in re-constructing contexts for the interpretation of texts.

Primary Reading
Robert D Hume, Reconstructing Contexts: The Aims and Principles of Archaeo-Historicism (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998) Chapters 2 and 4.
Michel Foucault, "La Meninas" from, "The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences" (London: Routledge 1991)
Wolfgang Iser, "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach" in Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh, "Modern Literary Theory: A Reader, third edition" (London, Arnold 1996)
H R Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory", in Rice and Waugh, ibid

SESSION 10: Dissertation Preparation
Tutor: Tim Woods

This session will deal with: choosing a dissertation project, paying particular attention to work length and the time that can be reasonably allotted to research;   the roles of the supervisor and researcher, focussing on the number of sessions that can be expected, together with a review of what these sessions can be expetcted to achieve. It wil also look in depth a the practical aspects of producing a dissertation, general presentation and submission procedures.

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 7