Unit name | Aesthetic Possibilities |
---|---|
Unit code | ENGL39029 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Wright |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of English |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit explores writing on aesthetics and ethics in relation to literary form and style between c.1790 and 1960. Topics we discuss are likely to include: the representation of beauty and artistry in literature and their bearing on ethical concerns, such as the health of the mind or the nation; the ways that texts examine the relation between social realities and imaginative possibilities; how ideas about hope and expectation are explored in texts, and how readers’ hopes and expectations are in turn shaped by text; the ways that literature has been thought culturally beneficial, and how such views fare with the advance of aestheticism, or in the face of the atrocities of war; how national, personal, or artistic ‘success’ or ‘failure’ might be defined, and to what purpose; what authors and critics have considered to be the possibilities of literary art, and how literary art explores ideas about possibility.
On successful completion of this unit, students will have:
Both summative elements will assess (1) knowledge and understanding of selected literary texts 1790-1960; test (2) students' understanding of the aesthetic and ethical concerns that inform this literature. In addition, the essays will examine (3, 4, and 5) students’ ability to analyse and assess competing accounts of the primary texts; their ability to adduce pertinent textual (primary and secondary) in support of their arguments, and their ability to present that argument lucidly and in accordance with academic conventions.
1 x 2 hour seminar.
Both summative essays map onto ILOs 1-5.
Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book (1868-9)
Henry James, Roderick Hudson (1875)
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876)
Christina Rossetti, A Pageant and Other Poems (1881)
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1895)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Samuel Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works