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Semester 1

The Field Full of Folk (ENLI10267)

Course Website

https://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/current/honours

Subject

English Literature

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 4 English Literature courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses, and we do not consider civilisation & other interdisciplinary courses, freshman seminars, writing/composition courses or film/cinema/media courses; visiting students who have taken multiple courses in literature in other languages, should have passed at least two courses in English Literature as well. **Please note that this course may incur additional costs to purchase core texts** **Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

The dreamer in Langlands fourteenth-century Piers Plowman opens the poem with a vision of the world. He sees the earth poised between the Tower of Truth in the East and the Valley of Death in the West. The earth comprises a fair feeld ful of folk, Of alle manere of men, the meene and the riche, / Werchynge and wandrynge. As this image shows, medieval conceptions of the world and of humanity's operation in that world, rest on imaginative assumptions which are often very different from those of today.

Course Description

This course will introduce you to a varied range of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English and Scottish literary texts: allegory, romance, dream vision, meditation, lyric and drama. Through these texts we will explore the medieval imaginative models of the physical and metaphysical world, considering issues such as society, the body, gender, God, love, and death. Visual images and other kinds of writing and commentary will be considered alongside the literary texts, to develop an understanding of the imaginative world which the literature both emerged from and helped to shape.

Assessment Information

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

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on an English Literature exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year English Literature course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the September Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed, and students will not be permitted to enrol in three 3rd year English Literature courses in the same semester at any time. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

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