Undergraduate - UnitATS2485 - Reading the past

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Notes

Synopsis

This unit will introduce second year students to the complex and challenging process of reading texts that were written in the light of historically different assumptions about the nature of reading and writing. In considering a variety of texts (which will be linked thematically) from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the unit will look at a broad range of past practices including multi-layered allegory, the use of emblematic signification, varieties of narratological structure and the use of structuring devices such as metre and rhetoric.

Outcomes

Students successfully completing this unit will gain:

1. An understanding of a broad range of reading and writing practices from the past;
2. An ability to read different kinds of historically produced literature in English;
3. An understanding of the historical map of English literature from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century;
4. A specific competence in metre and rhetoric.

Assessment

Exercise (1000 words): 20%
Long essay (2500 words): 50%
Seminar paper: 10%
One 1-hour exam (1000 words): 20%

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Peter Groves

Contact hours

One 1-hour lecture per week
One 1-hour tutorial per week

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Literary studies (Literatures in English, Creative writing)
English

Prerequisites

First year sequence in English or CCLS.

Prohibitions

ATS3485