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Semester 2

The Making of Modern Fantasy (ENLI10351)

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

How does a genre come into being? Fantasy in its widest definition dates back to the beginnings of human literature, and in its narrowest is a publishing category just several decades old. In this course we will adopt the medium-range view and examine a set of texts by British authors who have been canonised as founders of the modern genre, though they wrote before fantasy became a global entertainment phenomenon.

Course Description

We will consider fantasy's relation to cognate forms (fairy or folk tale, romance, epic, saga, science fiction) and the authors' extensive engagement with Classical and Norse mythology, Christianity and medieval literature. We will discuss the philosophical questions that often constitute fantasy's raison d'être, as well as different aspects of the secondary world-building process. We will also explore stylistic devices such as linguistic archaism, and common themes and structures, including the obsession with death and time, the role of boundaries and other-worlds, and the use of the quest or journey motif.

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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