Locating Literature/Speaking Subjects

Course Content:

In this module, students will investigate English literature through a critical lens centred
on two foundational components of plot in any piece of literature; place and character.
From Beowulf?s mead hall to Milton?s Hell, from Shakespeare?s Venice to Hogwarts, place
is fundamental to the creation and meaning of any literary work.

AUTUMN SEMESTER: Locating Literature
The first part of the module takes this foundational component of plot to explore English
literature across its history, from the medieval to the contemporary periods, to raise
students? awareness of the ways in which writers locate themselves and their books in
the world, and the ways in which the worlds beyond the text inform and are represented
in books.

Lectures: The Garden (Medieval/Early Modern), The City (Early Modern), The Household,
18th Century Domestic Space: Inside and Out, Felicia Hemans: The Poetic Self at Home
(Romanticism), The City (Victorian), The British Empire, The City (Modern), The Suburbs
(Modern), Post-modern/contemporary, Place and Space

SPRING SEMESTER: Speaking Subjects
The second part of the module will focus on a second essential element of plot,
character: from Chaucer?s Wife of Bath to Joyce?s Leopold Bloom, subjects? voices and
actions define and reflect the fictional worlds where they reside. The speaking subject
will be given focus as the key to exploring English literature in order to raise students?
awareness of the ways in which authors use language to create character, and to
encourage students to develop a critical view of the self that understands personality as
a realm for creative, constructive self-definition and development. By observing how
writing shapes place and place shapes writing, and how language shapes subjectivity
while speaking subjects, conversely, enact textual performances of the self, students will
be encouraged to consider their own relationships to texts and literacy in the university
and in the cultural and social spaces that they occupy, as subjects and citizens, in
everyday life.

Lectures: Alison (Medieval/Early Modern), Falstaff (Early Modern), The ?Moor? (Early
Modern/Restoration), 18th century, Romanticism, Modern, Modern/Postmodern/contemporary,
Post-modern/contemporary.

Teaching:
Interactive lectures, reading groups and seminars

Assessment:
STUDY OPTION 1:
A portfolio of coursework comprised of:
1) A take-home exam of approximately 1,000 words (30%)
2) Six Virtual Locations/Virtual Voices Assignments (of approx. 100 words) submitted via
the module blog (20%)
3) One 2,500-word Critical Essay (50%)
STUDY OPTION 2: portfolio (some elements as those for Study Option 1).
STUDY OPTION 3: portfolio (some elements as those for Study Option 1).

Study Option 1 = Whole Year
Study Option 2 = Autumn
Study Option 3 = Spring/summer