Aims

To study writing produced in Britain and beyond during the ‘long’ eighteenth century;
To develop students' ability to: consider literary texts in their historical and cultural contexts; analyse textual form and content in detail; communicate their critical responses to these texts in speech and writing.

Many genres and forms will typically be considered – fiction, drama, poetry, children’s literature, travel writing, life writing, and so on. All of this material will be placed in its historical, cultural and social contexts. The overarching intellectual aim of the module will be to enable students to understand how encounters with new peoples, places and ideas were reflected in, mediated by, and sometimes actually created in, the literature produced in these contexts.

Outline Of Syllabus

The core idea of this module is that the literature of this period engages in diverse and complex ways with the discovery, understanding, and representation of ‘new worlds’. These new worlds are not simply geographical; they are also social, cultural, ideological, political, environmental, and psychological. Such engagement took place as many phenomena that we now recognize as modern (scientific experiment, celebrity, global trade, feminism) began. As we study works of prose, poetry, drama, and other kinds from the 1680s to the 1780s, we will examine how new worlds of such dynamism and significance were written into being that they still shape our thinking today.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Lectures provide an overview of contextual and critical debates, either for specific texts or for the period more generally. Structured guided learning and small-group teaching offer the opportunity to link these debates to detailed engagement with the texts. Independent study, both alone and in peer study groups, is essential to equip students to engage with other learning methods. Workshops provide additional information about the module assessments and opportunities to hone the requisite academic skills to succeed in them.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The formative assessment tasks will enable students to develop the knowledge and skills essential for the summative assessment.

For the summative assessment, students will choose between two possible options:
1) a keyword essay, allowing students to make an argument that embraces the breadth and depth of material on this module;
2) a creative writing exercise that invites students to pastiche material studied on the module and write a commentary that explains the rationale for their approach with reference to their knowledge of eighteenth-century literature.