Module ENGL3741: The Politics of Style: From Close Reading to “World Literature”

Department: English Studies

ENGL3741: The Politics of Style: From Close Reading to “World Literature”

Prerequisites

• ENGL 2011 Theory & Practice of Literary Criticism

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To explore the history of ‘style’ as a central critical category of literary and capitalist modernity.
• To investigate the multiple political valences of specific literary styles across a range of genres (including the novel, short stories, poetry, the essay and paratexts) and periods (nineteenth-century realism, modernism, the contemporary).
• To introduce students to key methods and concepts for the critical analysis of literary styles (drawn from narratology, stylistics, formalism, dialectical criticism, and ideology-critique).
• To connect contemporary debates on style and form in the field of “world literature” to earlier debates on “close reading” and “practical criticism”.

Content

• Draws on key works by a range of major literary critics, such as Erich Auerbach, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson.
• Embraces a chronologically and generically broad range of literature from nineteenth-century realism to postcolonial literature, including such authors as Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, George Saunders, Denise Riley and Kamau Brathwaite.
• Includes selected material from non-Anglophone postcolonial traditions that have become central to Anglophone debates on style and form in the field of “world literature” (e.g., from Brazil: critics such as Roberto Schwarz and Antonio Candido; authors such as José de Alencar and Machado de Assis).
• Combines close readings of specific literary and critical texts with attention to relevant historical and intellectual contexts.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will gain detailed knowledge and understanding of the concept of ‘style’ and its centrality to literary modernity as well as of key methodological skills in the critical analysis of particular styles.
• Students will be able to demonstrate familiarity with relevant historical and intellectual contexts informing the trajectory of style across literary modernity.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate 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
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an 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
• skills of effective communication and argument
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an 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
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• a 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 a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• 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 permitted 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