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Semester 1

Literary Studies 1A (ENLI08020)

Subject

English Literature

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

1

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Please see Additional Restrictions below.

Course Summary

This course aims to offer a space in which students can begin to explore what reading literature at university level entails. Students will be invited to explore different models of authorship, readership and textuality, in order to reflect on how meaning is produced in the genres of poetry and drama. For example, how do we identify metre and rhythm? What do terms like 'caesura' and 'parallelis' mean, and what are they used for? In drama there is a big difference between reading a play on the page and seeing it performed on a stage - how do we get from one to the other? This course will explore the key terms and concepts needed to address such questions and enable students to read previously unseen texts confidently at a first reading.

Course Description

On this course you will be encouraged to develop your close-reading skills in two of the core literary genres - poetry and drama. You will acquire the key specialist terminology associated with each genre through the study of the technical vocabulary you need to identify and explain how a literary text engages with accepted conventions. While some texts will be studied in full, lectures and tutorials will draw on a variety of examples by writers from diverse backgrounds to ensure you are introduced to some key concepts in literary criticism (e.g., formalism, performativity) and are encouraged to reflect on how diverse experiences and context affect the discussion of authorship and readership. Lectures will provide you with appropriate terminology and demonstrate how this is used in practice; to consolidate your understanding, you will undertake regular, formative exercises both individually and in small groups to prepare for broader discussion in weekly hour-long tutorials and engage with quizzes that will test your acquisition of technical vocabulary. In your final assessments, you will be expected to demonstrate how you can reflect upon and apply what you have learned by submitting two close readings for summative assessment.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Visiting students can only take one of the following sets of courses during any programme of study: ‘Literary Studies 1A/1B’, ‘Literary Studies 2A/2B’ or ‘Scottish Literature 2A/2B’. Courses from these three sets cannot be combined during the same programme of study. This course therefore cannot be taken alongside Literary Studies 2A/2B or Scottish Literature 2A/2B.

view the timetable and further details for this course