EN1LL: Languages of Literature

Module Provider:

English

Number of credits:

20 [10 ECTS credits]

Level:

C (Certificate)

Terms in which taught:

Autumn and Spring

Module Convenor:

Dr S Thomson

Pre-requisites:

Co-requisites:

Modules excluded:

Current from:

2005/6

Aims:
This module aims to develop students' abilities and confidence as attentive critical readers, by promoting an analytical awareness of the different 'languages' at work in literary texts.

Assessable learning outcomes:
By the end of the module it is expected that students will be able to:

Additional outcomes:
Skills of oral communication and effective participation in group work will be encouraged, and students will develop their IT competence through the word-processing of assessed work.

Outline content:
The texts chosen for study in this module all raise fundamental questions about the kinds of English encountered in literature. Students will be introduced to ideas of Rhetoric and, through this, to notions of decorum and the constructedness of literary form. Illustrative materials, selected from a wide variety of different periods of history and parts of the English-speaking world, will enable students to examine and question such concepts as high and low 'register', 'Standard English' and 'dialect', sense and nonsense. Consideration is also given to some of the ways in which language constructs or contests national, regional, class and gender identities. Three core texts - Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, and James Kelman's A Disaffection - will be supplemented, under the guidance of seminar leaders, with a broad historical spectrum of shorter material largely drawn from The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Seminar discussion and rhetorical analysis, both of 'canonical' and more 'unconventional' texts, will highlight the diverse languages of literary and critical practice.

Brief description of teaching and learning methods:
A combination of lectures and structured seminar discussion. The majority of seminars will require preparatory reading, but some may be devoted to practical criticism of 'unseen' passages.

Contact hours:

Assessment:
Coursework:
Students write two non-assessed pieces of work (a short exercise in the Autumn term and an essay of up to 1500 words in the Spring term), plus one essay of 1500 words to be submitted for formal assessment in the Summer term.
Relative percentage of coursework : Assessed Essay 50%
Examinations:
A two-hour paper, requiring critical analysis and discussion of unseen passages. The exam carries 50% of the overall mark for the module.
Requirements for a pass:
A mark of 40% in both the Assessed Essay and the examination
Reassessment arrangements:
Awaiting Faculty policy