| Unit name | Comedy and the Literary Arts |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL29024 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Dr. Mason |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None. |
| Co-requisites |
None. |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit asks how it might be that, while humour is probably the most temporary of human expressions, there are some works which have been praised by many generations in many nations for providing a particular kind of pleasure for which the adjective comic has seemed (more or less) appropriate. Two kinds of enquiry are undertaken: the observation and classification of literary devices that appear to be common to pieces of writing that appear to have a comic intention, and a (probably fruitless) search for a Grand Unified Theory of the Comic. Selected works from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Byron and Dickens are studied in some detail alongside some general theories of the comic from Horace to the present. Portions of Greek, Latin, Spanish, French and Italian works will be read in translation (wherever possible a translation that was read with pleasure as an English literary work).
Aims:
This course is designed to acquaint students with a variety of works of different periods to which the adjective 'comic' has been attached, to derive notions of the relations between these works, and to examine some ancient and modern general debates about the nature of the comic in relation to possibly common constituents of the human mind?
On successful completion of this course students will be able to:
show knowledge of the work of a series of comic writings in relation to succeeding works that might be considered to be consequential; read comic writings with understanding and precision; prepare coherent written arguments deploying an appropriate critical vocabulary and supported by appropriate evidence and analysis; give presentations as an individual and as part of a group; use a wide variety of printed and on-line information and sources appropriate to this area of study.
1 x 2 hour seminar per week in one teaching block, plus 1-to-1 discussion in consultation hours where desired.
Boccaccio, The Decameron
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Pope, The Rape of the Lock
Byron, Don Juan
Dickens, Pickwick Papers
