Unit information: Writing the City: London 1550-1740 in 2018/19

Unit name	Writing the City: London 1550-1740
Unit code	ENGL20069
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Dr. John McTague
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of English
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit looks at how writers and other practitioners imagined and interpreted London as it grew and changed at dizzying speed through the early modern period, and drew to it people from all walks of life. We will ask how writers imagined and interpreted urban geographies, and how those geographies in turn shaped the drama, poetry, and novels that were written there. The unit examines the ways in which literature interacted with the city’s changing economic and material cultures, and how writers represent crime, the urban underworld and the market for illicit sex. It asks how aesthetic values were influenced by new tastes in fashion and luxury goods, and by the city’s new places and forms of exchange. The unit will also examine literature’s role in the construction and negotiation of urban identities and the city’s boundaries, how literature represents the place of men and women in the city, and how the city interacts with the stage and an emerging public sphere of print culture. The unit is explicitly designed to introduce students to high-level literary and historical research skills, both in the assessments (a research project culminating in a research poster, as well as an exam), and in the weekly hands-on sessions where students will use research databases and other materials in order to answer questions or solve problems.

Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of the unit a successful student will be able to:

1. demonstrate detailed knowledge and understanding of a range of texts which, and authors who, represent London in the period 1550-1740;
2. demonstrate an ability to use electronic and physical research resources to solve particular problems and answer particular questions, as an individual and as part of a team
3. discriminate between and evaluate different critical perspectives on the primary material studied;
4. identify and critically assess pertinent evidence to develop a cogent argument
5. demonstrate skills in textual analysis, argumentation, and critical interpretation using evidence from primary texts and secondary sources.

Teaching Information

1 x 2 hour seminar and 1 x 1 hr workshop weekly

Assessment Information

• One annotated bibliography (15%) [ILOs 1, 2, 3]
• One research poster (40%). [ILOs 1-5.]
• One 2.5 hour examination (45%). [ILOs 1, 3, 4, 5]

Reading and References

Early English Books Online

Old Bailey Online The Grub Street Project

Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722)

Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728)

Laurence Manley,Literature and Culture in Early Modern London (CUP, 1995)