Module ENGL3611: KEATS AND SHELLEY

Department: English Studies

ENGL3611: KEATS AND SHELLEY

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 explore a substantial range of the writings of Shelley and Keats; focus on critical issues -- such as the treatment of art, love, history, revolution, politics, and religion, and the function of form and language -- raised by their work; and to explore often complex questions of literary achievement.

Content

• This module will concentrate on a substantial selection of major poems by John Keats (1795-1821) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).
• Seminars will discuss the poets' intricate, often ambivalent and nuanced treatment of love, history, imagination, revolution, and the role of the poet and poetry; they will explore issues of poetic achievement and critical approach that will require a good grasp of post-1980s critical and theoretical approaches to literature (such as are summarised in O’Neill (ed.), Shelley, Longman Critical Reader, or exemplified in the Norton edition of Keats, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox)
• particular emphasis will be laid on the role played by form in the production of poetic meaning, even as relevant contexts – religious, political, philosophical, literary – will also be explored.
• Poems to be considered in detail will include such works as the following (by Keats) 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', 'Sleep and Poetry', various sonnets, The Eve of St Agnes, Lamia, Isabella, the two Hyperions, and the Odes, and (by Shelley) Alastor, Julian and Maddalo, The Mask of Anarchy, Prometheus Unbound, Adonais (Shelley's elegy for Keats), The Triumph of Life, and some shorter poems (including 'Mont Blanc', 'Ode to the West Wind', the late poems to Jane Williams).
• Keats's letters and some of Shelley's prose, including A Defence of Poetry, will also be discussed.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be expected to demonstrate a comprehensive and detailed knowledge of the writings of Shelley and Keats, and of relevant critical ideas and issues
• Expertise in areas of literature from the medieval to the modern period
• Appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation
• Knowledge of linguistic, literary, cultural and socio-historical contexts in which literature is written
• Knowledge of useful and precise critical terminology
• Awareness of the range and variety of approaches to literary study

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a mature ability to display analytical-critical skills in their discussion of the writers' literary achievement.
• mature and informed critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate comprehensive and detailed knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts
• enhanced sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an enhanced ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature
• an enhanced ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies
• confident skills of effective communication and argument
• enhanced awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• an informed command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• a mature and informed awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a confident and mature capacity to analyse critically
• an enhanced ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• enhanced competence in the planning and execution of essays
• an enhanced capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in an informed and critical manner
• enhanced information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• strong organisation and time-management skills

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

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• 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.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the essay may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.

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