Module ENGL2541: ELIOT AND POUND (SPECIAL TOPIC)

Department: English Studies

ENGL2541: ELIOT AND POUND (SPECIAL TOPIC)

Prerequisites

• Any Single or Joint Honours finalist student wishing to take this Special Topic module must have satisfactorily completed the required number of core modules. Combined Honours and Outside Honours students must have satisfactorily completed either two Level 1 core introductory modules, or at least one Level 1 core module and one further lecture based module in English at Level 2.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To study in depth the work of two major modernist poets: T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. It will enable students to explore their imaginative transformation of subjectivity and history in relation to particular intellectual and social contexts and to assess their poetic achievement. It will encourage students to read the poems with a close attention to 'modernist' formal complexities and innovations, looking carefully at the prose criticism of both poets, and with an awareness of the intellectual and cultural contexts in which these poets worked. The poetry of Eliot and Pound marks a radical break with the traditions of nineteenth-century poetry but also an attempt to recapture fragments of a disintegrating past: an understanding of their poetry is therefore essential to a deeper understanding of postwar and contemporary Anglo-American poetics. This module is designed to complement existing module options and special topics. It will develop skills in the close reading of poetry and build upon existing knowledge of the modern period acquired in Level 1, thus helping to prepare students for advanced work in poetry in their final year dissertations.

Content

• This module will be organised in a broadly chronological way - examining Pound and Eliot's early 'modernist' critical statements and manifestoes in relation to Cathay, Prufrock and Other Observations, and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. Special attention will be devoted to the collaboration of Eliot and Pound on The Waste Land. Thereafter we will sample Eliot and Pound's controversial forays into social and political criticism during the 1930s and 1940s. The course will close by reading Four Quartets and The Pisan Cantos as oblique and highly personal commentary upon the historical ruptures enacted by World War Two. The Faber editions of the ‘Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot' and ‘The Selected Poems of Ezra Pound' and The Blackwell Anthology 'Modernism', edited by Lawrence Rainey, are essential reading.

Learning Outcomes

• Students are expected to gain a broad knowledge of the development of twentieth-century Anglo-American poetics, and of relevant critical ideas and issues. Further, they will gain a detailed knowledge of the range and diversity of Eliot and Pound's poetry and critical theories.

• Students will develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of poetic language and an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts in their intellectual and cultural contexts. Further, students will develop an informed awareness of the formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and offer cogent and structured responses displaying an understanding of concepts and theories relating to this literary period.

• Students will develop a capacity to analyse poems critically and to interpret complex information in a structured and systematic way. Further, students on this course will be expected to exhibit independent thought and judgement in their essays and an ability to assess the ideas of critics. Critical reasoning, an ability to offer cogent arguments, as well as word-processing, time-management, electronic data access and information organizational skills, are all required for this module.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars will encourage peer-group discussion and a collective, interactive responsiveness to the texts under discussion. They will also enable students to think critically and to read poems with a close attention to the formal and aesthetic dimensions of poetic language.
• Seminars will encourage effective oral communication skills.
• The consultation session with the seminar leader prior to the first essay will facilitate an informed exploration of specific interests, ideas and arguments, enabling students to develop their subject-specific knowledge.
• Coursework: assessed essays will allow an opportunity for detailed, independent study and reflection, demonstrating an awareness of the ongoing critical commentary surrounding the texts under consideration thereby enriching their subject-specific knowledge.
• Written feedback provided after the first assessed essay will allow students to reflect upon the comments of examiners, stimulating reflection on how to improve the rhetorical persuasiveness and subject-specific knowledge exhibited in their second essay.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before the first assessed essay, students have an individual 15 minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points relevant to the essay and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University