Visions and revisions: reworkings
Alan Dilnot
8 or 12 Points
* 2 hours per week
* First 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; a grounding in the nature of the social circumstances and cultural conditions in which literature is produced; and an ability to articulate critical interpretations of the set texts in systematic written argument and in clear and confident oral presentation.
Synopsis This subject will examine some ways in which imaginative experience may be reworked. Reworkings include revision, 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 (8 points) Assignments (2500 words): 40%
* Essay (3500
words): 60%
Assessment (12 points) Two seminar papers (1300 words each): 15% each (a
literary exercise of 1500 words may be substituted for one of the seminar
papers)
* Essay (2500 words): 30%
* Essay (3500 words): 40%
Prescribed texts
Austen Persuasion OUP
Barnes A history of the world in 10 chapters Picador
Brontë C Jane Eyre OUP
Byatt Possession Vintage
Dabydeen Turner Random House
Dickens Great expectations Penguin
Dickens The mystery of Edwin Drood OUP
Eliot Selected poems Faber
Fowles The Magus Picador
Fowles The French lieutenant's woman Picador
Gaskell Cranford and Cousin Phillis Penguin
Harrison Theatre works, 1973-1985 Penguin
Hodgins Dispossessed Angus and Robertson
Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea Penguin
Shakespeare Hamlet Signet
Shakespeare The Tempest Signet
Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Faber
Warner Indigo Vintage
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