Literature and culture in Renaissance England
Proposed to be offered next in 1996
ENH4680
Rural England from Wordsworth to Lawrence
P Naish
12 points * 2 hours per week * Second semester * Clayton
Wordsworth was among the first to regard traditional English rural life as endangered, and it is the range of views held on that subject over the period 1783 to 1933 which will be studied in this subject. The prescribed texts are chosen to represent something of the diversity of opinion as well as different methods of expressing it and different purposes in doing so - in confidence in a diary or in published memoirs, in literary or social criticism, in poetry or fiction. The subject will not be concerned directly with social conditions but rather with topics like organicism, realism, idyll, dialect literature and the changing boundaries to serious writing and serious reading.
Assessment
Written (9000 words) comprising the following - Class paper: 15% * Report on a research task: 15% * Essay of 3000 words in extension of the task or the paper: 30% * A more general essay of similar length: 40%
Preliminary reading
Martin E W The secret people: English village life after 1750 Phoenix House
Winter G A country camera 1844-1914 Penguin
Prescribed texts
Clare J The parish Penguin
Clare J The shepherd's calendar OUP
Crabbe G Selected poems Carcenet
Eliot G Adam Bede Penguin
Hardy T Under the greenwood tree OUP
Hardy T Far from the madding crowd Penguin
Hardy T Jude the Obscure OUP
Hardy T Selected poems Penguin Classics
Lawrence D The rainbow Penguin
Thompson F Larkrise to Candleford Penguin
Wordsworth W Lyrical ballads OUP
Wordsworth D Journals OUP
Coursebook, available from English department
Recommended reading
Keith W The rural tradition and The poetry of nature