ENH4760

Visions and revisions: reworkings

A Dilnot

12 Points - 2 hours per week - Second semester - Clayton

Objectives Students successfully completing this subject should have developed an understanding of the variety of ways in which literary texts may be considered as responses to precursor texts; a recognition of how our own age interprets, evaluates and controls its cultural heritage by reworking it; and a grounding in the nature of the social circumstances and cultural conditions in which literature is produced.

Synopsis This subject will examine some ways in which imaginative experience may be reworked. Reworkings include revisions, rejoinders, amplification, reinterpretation, indirect allusion, translation and subversion. Factors in reworking, such as authorial bias, the spirit of the age, and movement from one genre or one art form to another, will also be considered. Postmodern and postcolonial factors in reworkings will receive particular attention. The large proportion of twentieth-century texts will enable students to assess how this century's literature is built upon earlier work, and to consider how contemporary sensibilities affect interpretation.

Assessment Two seminar papers (1500 words; a literary exercise of 1500 words may be substituted for one of the seminar papers): 15% each - Essay (2500 words): 30% - Essay (3500 words): 40%

Prescribed texts

Austen Persuasion OUP
Barnes J A history of the world in 10 chapters Picador
Bronte C Shirley Penguin
Byatt A S Possession Vintage
Dickens C Great expectations Penguin
Dickens C The mystery of Edwin Drood OUP
Fowles J The magus Picador
Gaskell E Cranford and Cousin Phillis Penguin
Harrison T Theatre works, 1973-1985 Penguin
Hodgins P Dispossessed Angus and Robertson
Shakespeare W Hamlet Signet
Shakespeare W Macbeth Signet
Shakespeare W The Tempest Signet
Shakespeare W The Winter's Tale Signet
Stoppard T Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead Faber
Thackeray The history of Henry Esmond OUP
Warner M Indigo Vintage
Course booklet (English department)

Recommended texts

Abrams M H and others (ed.) The Norton anthology of English literature vol 2, 6th edn, Norton
Borges Labyrinths Penguin
Eco U The limits of interpretation CUP
Leonard J (ed.) Seven centuries of poetry in English 3rd edn, OUP

Back to the 1999 Arts Handbook