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ENM4760/5760

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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