Module ENGL3911: Literature and the Artinatural 1850-1950

Department: English Studies

ENGL3911: Literature and the Artinatural 1850-1950

Prerequisites

• None.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To introduce the ways in which literature encounters a range of artinatural spaces, from domestic gardens, to landscaped parks, via plantations, slave gardens and the gardens of the homeless.
• To track issues such as plant intelligence, domination/ destruction, ownership, labour and leisure, dominion, stewardship, play, decolonisation through our key texts.
• To investigate the way in which writers have engaged with the artinatural across canonical and non-canonical genres, thereby fine-tuning skills in comparative stylistic analysis across different kinds of text.
• To engage with relevant historical, social and intellectual contexts informing the stylistic strategies of individual texts and their engagement with the artinatural.
• To assess the role of artinatural spaces and consider the ways in which they are connected to the wider world /wider culture/public imagination in the early twentieth century.
• To experiment with critical methodologies taken from the history and philosophy of science, economic history and psychoanalysis in addition to aesthetic and literary theory.

Content

• Understanding by the term ‘garden’ any natural space which has undergone human intervention, this module will track the human experience of artificial natural spaces in literature from Romanticism to 1950s sci-fi, reading across genres such as poetry, memoir, slave narrative, journalism, recipes, journals, travel writing and novels to test the limits of aesthetic and literary theory’s approach to artinatural spaces.
• Considers the ways in which literary texts do more than represent the natural world as simply there, or inert.
• Considers garden and landscape history (British and colonial contexts), taking in the shifts in attitude towards the human-made natural environment taking place between the early nineteenth- and mid-twentieth century.
• Since this module encourages students to try concepts against literary test cases without reducing the complexity of individual literary texts, each individual seminar will focus on a concept and an aspect of literary technique. This may lead us to focus on concepts such as: agency, ownership, dispossession, labour, play, curation, gift, and discovery; formal aspects of literary texts such as: metaphor, apostrophe, voice; genres such as: children’s literature, rural journalism, memoir/ autobiography; and modes such as pastoral, elegiac and horror.
• Pursues questions such as plant agency, the interrelation between labour, leisure and play, and the place of artinatural spaces in aesthetic theory.
• Tackles some of the problems with writing the garden, not least the question of how to write the garden without dominating or personifying it.
• Seeks to answer the question of what it is about artinatural spaces that, as the novelist and garden writer Jamaica Kincaid puts it, ‘disturb’ us.

Learning Outcomes

• Concepts of the garden, gardening and the artinatural, in relation to different kinds of paid, indentured or enslaved horticultural labour, from the eighteenth century to the present.
• Technical and theoretical language appropriate to the discussion of the artinatural, artifactual and natural in literature.
• Conventions of garden writing, including whether these can be said to exist, given the wide range of texts and genres encountered.
• The portrayal of landscape and artinatural spaces in different forms, genres and modes.
• The advantages of literature, as opposed to other art forms such as film, music and the plastic arts, in engaging with the artinatural.
• A brief history of British/ colonial gardening and land work, including plant hunting.
• Assessments of literary value.
• Knowledge of the linguistic, literary, cultural and socio-historical contexts which inform the texts under discussion.
• Knowledge of useful and precise critical terminology.
• Awareness of the range and variety of approaches to literary study.

• Students studying this module will:
• work across a range of literary forms/genres, synthesising readings of artinatural spaces from across historical time, and trace changes in concepts such as: the natural, artinatural, alienation and ownership.
• experiment with critical methodologies taken from the history and philosophy of science, economic history and psychoanalysis in addition to aesthetic and literary theory.
• evaluate literary value, and whether the way in which a literary artwork asks us to think about artinatural spaces is part of its value.
• situate texts amongst broader historical events (such as enclosure, slavery, the allotment movement, the rise of the domestic garden).
• practise sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language.
• Students studying this module will further 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 assessed work
• 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 assessment may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessment allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second assessment.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before Assessment 1, 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 assessment and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also if they wish, discuss their ideas for Assessment 2 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