Unit information: Critical Issues in 2011/12

Unit name	Critical Issues
Unit code	ENGL20100
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Dr. James
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 will provide a wide-ranging introduction to the conceptual issues involved in literary criticism. Topics studied may include: language, readers and reading, the author, the uncanny, narrative, character, figures and tropes, comedy, the tragic, history, the subject, sexual difference, God, ideology, post-colonialism, nationalism, metafiction, endings.

Aims:

The course aims is to familiarise students with the critical and theoretical vocabulary of, and the concepts which are central to, some of the most influential schools of criticism and theory in the twentieth century, such as narrative theory, feminism, psychoanalysis, post-colonialism, and postmodernism.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students should:

• gain a knowledge of a range of canonical literary texts from a variety of periods

• gain a knowledge of a diverse range of theoretical ideas

• gain an overview of the history of literary theory

• become more self-aware and discerning critical readers of, and writers about, literary texts

• be better able to apprectiate modern literary criticism.

Teaching Information

Seminars.

Assessment Information

• 1 formative essay of 1,000 words

• 1 summative essay of 2,500 words

Reading and References

• Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory (Harlow, 2004)

• Jonathan Culler, What is Literary Theory (OUP, 1997)

• Frank Lentricchia, Critical Terms for Literary Studies (Chicago, 1995)

• D.A. Russell & M. Winterbottom, eds, Ancient Literary Criticism (OUP, 1972)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness