Literature and History

ENGL10072 Literature and History 20 Semester 2 Undergraduate Level 1 Ingrid Hanson Unit coordinator English and American Studies 1 FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' First part HE study/Bachelors ' European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 10.0 This course introduces you to texts in their interactions with history. It recognizes what Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher describe as the ‘embeddedness’ of texts in the contingencies of history (2000, p. 7), but also pays attention to the local, national and international structural relationships by which power is maintained, transferred or challenged. Beginning with textual responses to the socially and politically transformative events of the French Revolution and its global interactions and impacts, we will think through the ways literary texts respond to, shape and are shaped by local, national, and international events, and the ways they interact with political, cultural, colonial and postcolonial histories. The aim of the course is to explore the relationship between literature and history and to introduce students to the study of literary and other texts in their historical milieus. Students will be encouraged to explore, via close and detailed discussions of particular texts, the diverse ways in which works of literature and other texts respond to, register, dramatise and represent history. The focus will be on a series of historical moments; the aim is not to offer comprehensive coverage but to nurture skills that can also be deployed in relation to texts from other periods. In the process students’ preconceptions about history itself will be challenged by exploring thinkers for whom history is not a singular or linear phenomenon and who ask questions about the ways in which history is mediated by texts and narratives. In each week we will study a core literary text in order to think about history through questions of language, style and form. The aim is for each of the texts in each segment of the course to look at different aspects of their period, in different ways and from different angles. Core texts will be combined with theoretical texts that examine ways of studying literature in relation to historical context. The aim throughout will be to prioritise texts and to think about the different ways in which they represent, affect and are affected by particular historical moments.    ' To examine the relationship between texts and historical contexts;  - To introduce students to the study of literary and cultural texts within the framework of the historical past - To cultivate the skill of close reading, especially sensitive attention to literary form;  - To study a range of texts across a range of genres and literary periods;  - To make critical use of theoretical methods for studying literature historically;  - To foster both verbal and written skills in critical and analytical thinking and the deployment of evidence to sustain a coherent argument appropriate to Level 1, initial year degree work. By the end of this course students should have developed: Knowledge and understanding An extensive and detailed knowledge of the different ways in which groups of texts from two/ three historical moments represent, affect and are affected by those events; An understanding of key debates about the study of literature in relation to history and historicity, including: the variety of ways in which texts respond to and also shape historical events; the relationship between literary form and political conflict; and the mediation and construction of history by texts and narratives. Intellectual skills An ability to interrogate the category of 'history'; evaluate the usefulness and cogency of rival theoretical approaches to the study of literature in history; read texts closely in order to discuss how their form, language and so on affect and are affected by historical context. Practical skills Research, writing and analytical skills appropriate to level 1 study. Transferable skills and personal qualities The ability to: work independently and in groups; construct and support an argument; utilise skills in written expression such as the deployment of evidence and the organisation of a coherent argument; display a capacity for self- and peer-criticism. Other Teamwork, critical thinking, analytical readings of complex materials, time management, written and oral communication skills. 0 Other 100% Coursework essay 40%Examination 60% Written feedback on essay/exam N PRIMARY  Edmund Burke, selected prose extracts  Andrew Marvell, selected poetry  John Milton, political sonnets  Thomas Paine, selected prose extracts  W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz  Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale  Anna Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone  Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman  William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads  SECONDARY  Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (1997)  Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (1981)  Dominick LaCapra, “History beyond the Pleasure Principle?” (2009)  ---------Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001)  Jerome McGann, The Romantic Ideology (1986)  Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’ (1989)  Hayden White, ‘The Historical Text as Literary Artifact’ (1974).   Lectures 22 Seminars 11 0 167 The use of dictionaries in the examination is prohibited. This rule applies to all categories of students, including all Visiting Students.