Module ENGL3201: W B YEATS

Department: English Studies

ENGL3201: W B YEATS

Prerequisites

• Successful completion of either ENGL2011 Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism or ENGL2021 Shakespeare.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• This module aims to explore a substantial range of W.B. Yeats’s writing, focusing on his poetry, but including some of his drama and prose works. Attentive to the formal complexity of Yeats’s poetic practice, we shall also consider the national and transnational contexts for his writing, including the effects of Irish de-colonisation, the introduction of Indian and Japanese literature to the European canon, and the impact of C20th global politics and war.
• Specifically we shall explore Yeats’s articulation of folkloric themes and Irish mythology, the relation between political violence and poetic form, the crisis of free verse in the age of modernism, theatrical experimentation through adaptations from Japanese Noh, the collaborative translations with the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, and the multiple cultural crises which accompanied the advent of Fascism in the 1930s.
• We shall highlight and explore in depth often complex questions of literary development and achievement.

Content

• This module explores the poetry, drama, prose and collaborative translations of W.B. Yeats.
• Yeats's remarkable poetic development will be at the heart of the module, beginning with his early romantic lyrics from the period of the Irish Revival, moving through his love poetry and poetry of disillusionment, to the late collections of his old age: The Tower, Words for Music, Perhaps and New Poems.
• The module will look in substantial detail at the way in which Yeats’s poems and other writings articulate his thoughts and feelings about issues such as love, art, poetry itself, history, politics, and religion.
• While attending to relevant contextual issues, the module will give particular emphasis to ways in which Yeats’s artistic forms shape his imaginative investigations and meanings
• Yeats's plays will be studied in two seminars.
• Students will be encouraged to read widely in Yeats's prose.

Learning Outcomes

• Students should demonstrate detailed knowledge of the work, especially the poetry, of W.B. Yeats, be able to appreciate its control of artistic forms, and show mature awarenesss of relevant critical ideas and issues. Students will also be introduced to theories of transnational poetics and world literature, specifically by considering how the cultural predicaments of Ireland influenced Yeat’s poetics, and were then transferred through Yeats’s work into a broader global context.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• mature critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• mature and 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 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 complex texts 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
• 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 role played by the imagination in literary production 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