ENGLISH

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr W Price

Pre-requisites

None.

Overview

“I can read you like a book” is a cliché for complete and easy understanding. But is the process of reading so self-evident? And do books give up their secrets quite so easily? This course introduces students to the study of English by exploring the dynamic relationship between author, reader and text in a series of classic works of fiction and poetry. It examines what it is we do when we read: how we process information from textual clues and respond imaginatively to the fictions presented on the page. We investigate how the form of a text shapes responses and structures expectations in the reader. We look at the interplay of oral and written traditions in poetic form, and how poets play upon convention in their work. We also engage with disruptive texts which ask us to reflect upon literature and ask what it is and what it is for.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures (Tues and Thurs) and 1 one-hour tutorial (to be arranged) per week.

4 one-hour voluntary sessions on library skills, essay writing, exam preparation and course review.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (50%); continuous assessment (40%) consisting of 2 essays (15% and 25% respectively); tutorial assessment mark (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

The first written exercise will constitute an unassessed plan (including a draft introduction of approximately 100 words) of the first assessed essay submission. This will increase both the coherence and utility of the assessment procedures whilst streamlining the workload of students on the course.

Feedback

Class tutors will provide both verbal feedback in class (and/or office hours where requested) and written feedback via the standard English Literature cover sheets.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr W. Barras

Pre-requisites

None.

Overview

An understanding of the way language is structured is an invaluable tool to discuss and analyse English and other languages. This course provides students with an introduction to the main aspects of English linguistics. Students will learn how to identify and analyse the major "building blocks" of language through an introduction to phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, as well as sociolinguistics. Examples for illustration and discussion will be drawn from varieties of English spoken in the British Isles and world-wide. Lectures and tutorials will be geared to providing students with an active vocabulary with which to discuss language and essential analytical tools with which to analyse its structure and function.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 3 on-line assessments (20% each); one 1,250 word paper (30%); Tutorial Assessment Mark (10%).

Resit: Examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will receive formative commentary from tutors in tutorials.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback on-line for their performance in on-line assessment; they will also be encouraged to discuss this performance with their tutors. All students will receive written feedback on essay performance; again, they will be encouraged to discuss their performance with their tutors.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

None.

Overview

Literature can provoke, offend and disturb as well as entertain. This course considers some of the most powerful and controversial works of modern literature. It examines the circumstances of publication, the nature of the controversy, and the cultural and critical impact of each work. The course shows how poems, plays and novels can raise searching questions about national, racial and personal identity, and looks at the methods used by writers to challenge their readers, as well the responses of readers to such challenges. Included are texts such as: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Art Spiegelman's Maus and Seamus Heaney's North.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (50%): 1,000 word essay (15%); 1,500 word essay (25%); Tutorial Assessment Mark (10%). 1 two-hour written examination (50%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

(1) Written feedback is provided on a diagnostic exercise early on in the course prior to completion of required written assessments; (2) Oral feedback on students' progress is provided continuously by tutor.

Feedback

Written feedback is provided within two weeks of submission of essays; oral feedback available on request with regards to written examination.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

TBA

Pre-requisites

None.

Overview

Theories of communication, including the deconstruction of widespread misconceptions.


Broad principles of language patterning and their embeddedness in cultural perspectives.


The relationships between communicative interaction and construction of the self and society.


The contribution that an understanding of language and communication can make to a range of disciplines.


Selected contemporary social issues that are principally or partly communicative/linguistic in nature.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures
1 one-hour tutorial

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 2,000-2,500 word project or essay (50%);
1 two-hour written examination (40%); Tutorial Assessment (10%).


Resit: Examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will receive formative commentary from tutors in tutorials.

Feedback

Students will be encouraged to discuss this performance with their tutors. All students will receive written feedback on essay performance, again, they will be encouraged to discuss their performance with their tutors.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr R M Millar

Pre-requisites

None.

Notes

This is a 15 credit, six week course.

Overview

Meaning is at the heart of our understanding of language, ourselves and the world; and yet it is notoriously difficult to 'tie down'. Why do I think a articular word means one thing while you think it means something 'subtly or significantly' different? This course gives you the opportunity to explore these issues. You will learn how we construct hierarchies of meaning and how these may differ from language to language; you will also come to understand how what a word means can differ from place to place and at different times. The course also considers how dictionaries and thesauri are constructed.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, one line workshop and one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 2,000 word essay (50%); homework exercise (30%), tutorial assessment (20%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will receive formative commentary from tutors in tutorials.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback on-line for their performance in on-line assessment; they will also be encouraged to discuss this performance with their tutors. All students will receive written feedback on essay performance; again, they will be encouraged to discuss their performance with their tutors.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Gordon

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 2 or above who have passed 30 credit points in Level 1 English courses OR from literature courses in a foreign language.

Overview

So you think you know Shakespeare? This course invites you to think again. Studying a range of plays we seek to get behind the mythology of Shakespeare, and rediscover the dynamic inventiveness of the Elizabethan theatre. Shakespeare and his contemporaries were the principal players in a period of literary experimentation that reinvented the possibilities of literature. The playhouse was a new cultural venue in Shakespeare's time, and the language itself was a rapidly evolving medium to which drama gave voice. Building upon study of the language of Shakespeare and the conditions of the Elizabethan playhouse, this course examines the ways in which the theatre imagined and debated key issues of the period. What was the place of Shakespeare's theatre within the culture of his time? How did his plays engage with controversial questions of politics, religion and gender? And how did he bridge the demands of a form that was both popular entertainment and a leisure activity of the elite? Encounters with Shakespeare is your chance to find out.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures plus one-hour tutorial per week. Additional optional film screening on Wednesday afternoons.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (50%), in-course assessment: written exercise (5%), 1,200 word first essay (15%), 1,500 word second essay (20%) and tutorial work (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Feedback

Assessed coursework will be returned to students within two weeks of submission with detailed comments and students will have the opportunity to discuss their work with tutors in specified office hourse. Generalised feedback on coursework highlighting issues needing attention, will be delivered in class as part of preparation for each successive assignment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr R M Millar

Pre-requisites

None.

Notes

This is a 15 credit, six-week course.

Overview

A chronological examination of the linguistic history of the British Isles, including discussion of the emergence, social and cultural development, and (in some cases) extinction of all languages known to have been used in the archipelago from earliest times. The presently living languages (English, Scots, Gaelic, Irish and Welsh) will be discussed in relation to their individual historical developments, their mutual relationships, and their relationships with extinct languages which influenced them in earlier periods. The main focus of the course will not be on internal linguistic history but on the socio-political aspects of language history. Examination of the external history of the languages will illuminate many issues in socio-historical linguistics: mutual influencing of languages, standardisation, diversification, style and register, status of dialects and sociolects.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures per week, one on-line workshop and one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 2,000 word essay (50%); homework exercise (30%); tutorial assessment (20%).

Resit: Two-hour examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will receive formative commentary from tutors in tutorials.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback from tutors on written work and on tutorial performance.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr T C Baker

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 2 or above who have passed 30 credit points in Level 1 English courses.

Overview

How do we know what we know? Are our lives shaped by our own efforts and learning, or are we subject to forces we cannot control? Does the acquisition of knowledge carry tragic consequences? Such questions have reverberated throughout literary history. Looking at a wide range of texts from ancient to modern, and including poems, plays, and novels, this course will introduce students to some of the central ethical and intellectual concerns found in literature, as well as providing a solid cross-period foundation for further study. Besides literary expressions of the Fall such as Milton's Paradise Lost, the course features reworkings of the Faust and Prometheus legends, including texts by authors such as Aeschylus, Marlowe, Mary Shelley and Angela Carter.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st attempt: 1 two-hour examination (50%); in course assessment: first essay (1,500 words) 15%, second essay (1,800 words) (20%), one reflective exercise (5%); tutorial assessment mark (10%).

Resit:1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will keep a weekly course journal which will not be given a CAS mark, but will be taken into consideration as part of tutorial assessment.

Feedback

Summative assessments will be given CAS marks, and written or verbal feedback will be provided. Additional informal feedback on performance and tutorial participation is also given in tutorials.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr A. Skrzypek

Pre-requisites

LN 1002 or EL 1514 or equivalent. This pre-requisite may be waived at the discretion of the Undergraduate Programme Convener.

Notes

This is a six week course.

Overview

From the moment we become literate, we are taught that the word is the smallest unit of meaning. This is not entirely correct. Words themselves are often made up of smaller meaningful elements. Underlying men, for instance, are two units: man and a plural marker. This course will teach you how English and other languages construct their vocabularies through word-formation, giving you the analytical and conceptual tools necessary to do so. You will also consider how the sound-pattern of a language interacts with its morphology (so that, in English, the plural's in hands is pronounced differently from the same ending in hats) as well as the ways in which word-formation can change over time.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, a weekly online workshop and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 2,000 word essay (50%); 1 homework exercise (30%), tutorial assessment mark (20%).

Resit: Examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Informal feedback will be given during the seminars.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback for their essay and homework exercise in the form of comments on the work itself, informal feedback will also be given during the seminars.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Mr W. Barras

Pre-requisites

EL 1514 or equivalent. This pre-requisite may be waived at the discretion of the Undergraduate Programme Convener.

Notes

This is a six week course.

Overview

The course covers key aspects of articulatory phonetics and will introduce elementary phonological theory as it relates to the description of English. The latter will include accounts of simple phonological processes and the notion of derivational rule. Students will also acquire skills in the production and perception of sounds of English through a combination of lectures and practical activities (ear training, transcription practice, etc).

Structure

2 one-hour lectures per week, 1 one-hour tutorial per week, 1 online workshop per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%), one assessed homework exercise (30%), and tutorial assessment mark (20%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

The formative assessment will take the form of feedback during seminars.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback for their essay and homework exercise in the form of comments on the work itself, informal feedback will also be given during the seminars.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr H Lynch

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 of the English Programme or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

The fourteenth century is the greatest period in the early history of literature in English. At a time of conflict, tension and change, native and cosmopolitan influences combined to produce a diverse and dynamic cultural scene, and some of the most entertaining and thought-provoking works in the literary tradition. Texts and authors studied range from the popular to the courtly and from the sacred to the (very) profane. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales features prominently on the course, with narrative poetry also represented by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Meanwhile, the great civic Mystery play cycles represent the beginnings of a vigorous vernacular dramatic tradition which points forward to the achievements of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Students will become familiar with Medieval language and be introduced to themes and genres ranging from courtly love and chivalric romance, to mysticism and autobiography, from comic tales (fabliaux) to drama and lyric verse. The course will also examine Chaucer's influence on later writers, and include work by Scottish writers Henryson and Dunbar.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture followed by a one-hour language class, and
1 two-hour tutorial per week

Assessment

1st attempt: 1 two-hour exam (40%), continuous assessment: 2000-2500 word essay ( 40%), presentation (10%) seminar work(10%)

Resit: 1 two-hour examination

Formative Assessment

Throughout the course students will be encouraged to ask for formative assessment from the tutor on their achievements. Individual and group discussions with the tutor will also give students a chance to develop their undertanding of what is asked of them and how they can produce this.

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on the essays. Detailed oral feedback on the presentations.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr H Hutchison

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 of the English Programme.

Overview

This course explores American literature from colonial times to 1900, analysing the work of major writers in historical and political context. The focus of the course is the nineteenth century, a period of immense social and cultural upheaval in the United States, which transformed a rural colony into a political and industrial giant. The course considers issues of geography, gender, race and religion, and the search for and emergence of a distinctively American voice. It examines the work of writers such as Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James and Walt Whitman.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture per week;
1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous Assessment: Essay (2,000-2,500 words) (40%); group project (10%); seminar assessment mark (10%); 1 two-hour examination (40%).

Resit: 1 two-hour examination.

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment will be provided via written feedback on assessed work. Students will also be encouraged to discuss their progress with their tutor at office hours.

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on the essays. Detailed oral feedback on the presentations.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Alcobia-Murphy

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 of the English Programme.

Overview

The past two decades in Scotland and Ireland have witnessed a remarkable literary renaissance, encompassing fiction, poetry and drama. Much of this recent work has tended not only to resist metropolitan literary and linguistic norms, but also - and perhaps more importantly - to challenge inherited notions of Scottish and Irish identity. New modes of urban writing, working-class writing and women's writing have altered the landscapes of Scottish and Irish literature. The course will examine a range of Scottish and Irish texts, adopting a comparative framework where appropriate, and focussing on such issues as: the role of writing in the construction of national identity; the relationship between nationality and gender; the literary use of non-standard language (demotic and synthetic Scots, Hiberno-English); regional identity and the urban/rural division; narrative voice; literature and politics.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar, per week (running for 12 weeks).

Assessment

1st attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%); essay one 2,000 words (15%); essay two 2,500 words (25%); individual presentation (10%); seminar assessment mark (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour examination (100%).

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on the essays. Detailed oral feedback on the presentations.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr R McColl Millar

Pre-requisites

120 credit points at Level 2, which should include EL 2010 / EL 2302 or equivalent. This pre-requisite may be waived at the discretion of the Head of School.

Notes

Admission subject to approval by the Head of School. The field work aspects of this course may pose difficulties to students with disabilities. For such students, alternative arrangements will be made available. Any student wishing to discuss this further should contact the School Disability Co-ordinator.

Overview

One of the universals of human life is that language is subject to change. Underlying much of this change is the fact that the form of all living languages varies from speaker to speaker. Sociolinguistics studies the way class, ethnic background and gender affect the way you speak and the way others perceive your speech. Historical Linguistics attempts to find significant patterns in the same variation and change found in the past.

This course introduces the basic principles of both Sociolinguistics and Historical Linguistics. In order to illustrate these principles, reference will be made to case studies, both historical and contemporary. You will also be encouraged to participate in small-scale research and fieldwork projects.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture and 1 one-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

Two 2,000-2,500 word essays, each worth 30% of the total mark;
one 1,000-1,500 word analytical exercise (20% of the total mark);
group presentation (10% of the total mark);
seminar work (10%)

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Feedback

Formative assessment will be given to students individually on request.

Feedback on essays will be provided in writing on the essay cover sheet. Students will also be invited to discuss their performance with their tutor.

Both the Group Project and the Seminar Assessment Mark will be made available to students along with a generally brief written report from the tutor. Students will also be encouraged to speak with the tutor about this assessment.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Prof. P Crotty

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 in English.

Overview

In the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Scotland experienced 'a social and economic transformation unparalleled among European societies of the time in its speed, scale and intensity' (Tom Devine). The course examines how this changing Scotland is imagined in some of the key literary texts of the period, and will relate these texts to their contexts: literary, linguistic, social, historical and intellectual. Writers to be studies may include: Robert Burns, John Galt, Lord Byron, Walter Scott, James Hogg, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Nan Shepherd, Hugh MacDiarmid and Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture and 1 two hour seminar, per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (40%); essay 2,500 words (35%); exercise 1,000 words (15%); seminar work (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour examination (100%).

Feedback

Detailed Written feedback on the essay and exercise. Oral feedback on request concerning the seminar performance both during the course and after its completion. Oral feedback on the exam upon request.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Prof. B Fennell

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above who have fulfilled the entry requirements to the Language and Linguistics Honours programme, or by permission of the Programme Co-ordinator.

Overview

Students will be introduced to a range of conceptions and perspectives on discourse, drawn from disciplines such as linguistics, social psychology, sociology, and communication studies. They will examine what the study of discourse reveals about the nature of language, social interaction, power relations, and the construction of meaning. They will learn the basic principles of analytical methods for discourse analysis including;

• text linguistics


• narrative analysis


• conversation analysis


• critical discourse analysis

They will gain practical experience in applying these approaches to a variety of discourses, including conversations, interviews, the media, academic writing, literary texts, and advertisements.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar; 1 one-hour seminar.

Assessment

The assessment in this course is as follows:
1. 2,000-word essay/analysis (50%);
2. 1 two-hour examination (40%).
3. Seminar Assessment Mark (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will receive feedback on their essays/analyses before the written examination.

Feedback

As well as comments on their essays, students will receive oral feedback in the seminars.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor D Duff

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 of the English Programme.

Overview

The Romantic movement (1789-1832) was a turning point in literary history which transformed received modes of writing, redefined the role of literature, and gave new prominence to ideas of originality, imagination, creativity and self-expression. This course explores these developments. The first part centres on the work of Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and studies the emergence of the revolutionary aesthetic of Romanticism in the context of the social and political upheavals of the 'Age of Revolution'. The second part focuses on the 'second-generation' Romantic poets Shelley, Byron and Keats, but also pays attention to outstanding prose writers of the period including Thomas De Quincey and the novelists Jane Austen and Walter Scott.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%); continuous assessment (50%) comprising 2,500 word essay (30%), group project (10%) and seminar work (10%).

1 two-hour examination (100%).

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on the essay. Detailed written feedback on group project. Oral and/or written feedback on seminar work.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Pugh

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 of the English Programme.

Overview

The Renaissance has been widely considered the golden age of English literature, producing such towering literary figures as Shakespeare, Jonson and Marlowe, and presenting mingled views of the erotic, the political, the religious and the lyrical while even laying claim to England's first novels. Taking in poetry, drama and prose, this course presents a wide and contrasting range of writings which illustrate its authors' diverse interests: the court, the country, the city and above all love; or should that be sex?

Structure

1 two-hour lecture and 1 two-hour tutorial (to be arranged) per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%); 2 essays, 2,000-2,500 words each (25% each); Seminar Assessment Mark (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour examination (100%).

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on the essays. Detailed oral feedback on any (unassessed) presentations.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

A pass in EL 2803. This pre-requisite may be waived at the discretion of the Head of School.

Overview

This course focuses upon two areas of speech communication: speech acoustics; the study of the sound signals passing between speaker and hearer, and auditory phonetics; the processes by which these signals are perceived and understood by the hearer. Topics to be covered include speech production, basic acoustics, computerised methods for speech analysis, auditory system, and speech perception. Students will learn to use speech analysis software to analyze speech data, and will become familiar with theories of speech production and perception.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar and 1 one-hour laboratory practical per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment: Three in-course exercises (20% each for the first two and 50% for the third) and seminar assessment work (10%). In-course exercises 1 and 2 should be of between 1,500 and 2,000 words in length; the third exercise inolves a 500 word lab report and a one-hour in class test.

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Feedback

Formative assessment will be given to students individually upon request.

Feedback on in-course reports will be given in writing on the cover sheet. Students will also be invited to discuss their performance with their tutor.

The Seminar Assessment Mark will be made available to students along with a generally brief written report from the tutor. Students will also be encouraged to speak to their tutor about the assessment.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A. Skrzypek

Pre-requisites

120 credit points at Level 2, which should include EL 2010 / EL 2302 or equivalent. This pre-requisite may be waived at the discretion of the Head of School.

Notes

Admission subject to approval by the Head of School. The field work aspects of this course may pose difficulties to students with disabilities. For such students, alternative arrangements will be made available. Any student wishing to discuss this further should contact the School Disability Co-ordinator.

Overview

How children and adults learn language has been the topic of much debate within linguistics. This course will focus on some of the main theories of language learning and introduce students to research in first and second language acquisition. It will answer questions such as: when do children first start learning language? How do they go from babbling to one word sentences to the full complexity of adult grammar in a span of merely a few years? How do the brains of people who learn two languages simultaneously differ from those who learn a second language later on in life? What are some of the causes of the speech errors we find in second language learners? How can using a second language influence the way we use our native language?

Structure

1 two-hour lecture and 1 one-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment: one 2,000-2,500 word essay (30%), seminar work (10%), group presentation (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Feedback

Formative assessment will be given to students individually on request.

Feedback on essays will be provided in writing on the essay cover sheet. Students will also be invited to discuss their performance with their tutor.

Both the Group Project and the Seminar Assessment Mark will be made available to students along with a generally brief written report from the tutor. Students will also be encouraged to speak with the tutor about this assessment.

The examination will take place after the course is completed. Students may, however, ask for an oral report on their performance.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Lewis

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 of the English honours Programme or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

Reading the Victorians reveals some surprising things about the nineteenth century, and about many elements of modern-day society. The years of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901) brought rapid change to Britain with industrialisation, urbanisation, scientific innovation, the growth of the British Empire and major political reform. However, this was also an age of artistic creativity, optimism and humour. Literature in many different forms was at the heart of these developments. More people were learning to read than ever before, and steam printing produced cheaper books, creating a mass-market of readers for the first time. This course explores how Victorian literature was both a product of its age and an agent of change, which spread evolving ideas about scientific theories, the changing role of women, and the function of art in society. It examines the work of writers such as Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James and Rudyard Kipling.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Two essays, each 2,500 words (40%); group project (10%); seminar assessment mark (10%).

Resit: One 3,000 word essay.

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment will be provided via written feedback on assessed work. Students will also be encouraged to discuss their progress with their tutor at office hours.

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on the essays. Detailed oral feedback on the presentations. Detailed written feedback on SAM.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr W Price

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 of the English Programme.

Notes

This course will not be available to students outwith the English Hons Programme.

Overview

The course offers students the opportunity to develop both their theoretical understanding and practical application of creative processes and literary craft. Examples of writing by recognised authors and class members will be used to stimulate and illustrate key principles in the successful creation of fiction and poetry. The course will also introduce students to the challenges involved in editing their creative work to a professional standard and submitting it for publication. Teaching consists of practical advice and guidance from class tutors in a workshop environment alongside theoretical introductions to topics such as the uses of form, the role of voice in fiction and poetry, and effective editing. By enabling students to develop their understanding of, and practical skills in, the writing and publishing of prose fiction and poetry, the course also contributes to their future career potential (whether as creative or other kinds of professional writers), providing them with a better understanding of how literary works are constructed and how they contribute to the broader culture.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture per week; 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One completed portfolio of fiction of 2500-3500 words total, or one short portfolio of poetry comprising 60 to 120 lines (60%); one 1500 word piece analysing, in practical, writerly terms, the expressive, stylistic and formal effectiveness of a chosen poem or short story (30%); Seminar Assessment Mark (10%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new folio.

Formative Assessment

Throughout the course, students will receive regular oral feedback from both class tutor and class members in focussed workshop sessions. The re-drafting of coursework will also be subject to detailed, constructive feedback in both written and verbal form.

Students will also keep a course journal.

Feedback

Weekly feedback on journal work and class contributions.

Detailed written feedback on summative assessment.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

Available only to final year English honours students.

Overview

This course will provide students with guidance on writing a dissertation on a topic approved by the programme co-ordinator for the Head of School.

Structure

3 one-hour tutorials or an equivalent as agreed between supervisor and supervisee.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 8,000 word dissertation (100%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new dissertation.

Formative Assessment

Feedback on draft material - in individual tutorials.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr H Hutchison

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This course will not be available in session 2013-14.

Overview

This course explores interactions between literary production and material culture in and around the Victorian period. Technological developments in the early nineteenth century made possible the mass-production of goods, including books, for the first time. But alongside new technologies came a growing fascination with the past and the rise of a thriving museum culture. Using the rich resources of the University collections, this course allows students to explore print material alongside collected objects and art to gain a fuller understanding of the diversity of the culture of the period, and to appreciate the role that texts and objects played in shaping nineteenth-century attitudes. The course also involves working to curate an exhibition for the public using material from the university’s collection. The theme of this exhibition will vary from year to year and literary texts will be chosen to intersect with the content of the exhibition.

Exhibition themes might include Empire, Nature, the Pre-Raphaelites, Travel, Time or the Victorian body.

Structure

Two 2-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st attempt: Group presentation (10)%; essay (50%); reflective report on creation of exhibition (30%); participation mark based on class discussion and contribution to exhibition (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr H Hutchison

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

The late nineteenth century brought industrialisation and a new sophistication into American culture. This course focuses on American writing at this time of astonishing social and intellectual change. Covering the historical period from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, this course explores issues such as innocence and decadence, the urban environment, the First World War, and the changing place of women in society. This course aims to examine the response of writers to these issues, and the new forms of literature which they developed in an increasingly modern age. Authors to be studied include Henry James, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, F Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather and E E Cummings.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 2 essays 3,000 words (40%) each.

Seminar assessment mark, based on frequency and quality of participation in class (20%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment is a routine part of all assessment procedures within English. Students will be given extended written and verbal feedback on assessed work, and will have regular opportunities to discuss their progress with the course tutor.

Feedback

Detailed notes will be returned to students with all assessed work. Students will also be encouraged to discuss their progress with the tutor via email or at twice-weekly office hours.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Prof. R O'Connor

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English or History programme.

Overview

Science became a major force in society during the nineteenth century. This course offers an exciting interdisciplinary look at the place of science within the literature and culture of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. It also explores how science was in turn shaped by wider cultural concerns during this period, and how science writing developed alongside other literary genres. Exploring fictional and poetic writings alongside essays and scientific non-fiction, it investigates how developments in areas such as geology, technology and physics were linked to the rise of an industrial, urban society, and challenged (or reinforced) traditional ideas about religion, gender, class and the human mind. It will also explore how science was used (and abused) in the central political and social debates of the period, and how this cultural context altered the course of science itself.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Two 2,500-3,000 word essays (40% each), research exercise (10%), seminar participation (10%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

In person at a one-to-one meeting arranged with each student.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Rist

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

This course will read a number of dramatic works by Christopher Marlowe, one of Shakespeare's best-known theatrical contemporaries, paying particular attention to the author's sustained interest in social outsiders and the moral universes in which they exist and are judged. The course will also consider Marlowe's dramatic awareness of the religious controversies of his age and address New Historical questions as to the subversive or conservative power of the theatre in the sixteenth-century England of Renaissance and Reformation.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 3,000 word essay (80%); Seminar Assessment Mark (20%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Feedback for the essay will be given through the department's standard essay cover-sheets and also through comments on the essay itself.

Feedback for the SAM will be given through the department's standard SAM-sheet.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Rist

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This course is not available in 2013-14

Overview

'Hamlet' is the best-known of revenge tragedies, but what has been called the Golden Age of English drama gave us many other examples of the genre, including among others Shakespeare's own 'Titus Andronicus', Kyd's 'The Spanish Tragedy', Middleton's 'The Revenger's Tragedy' and Webster's 'The Duchess of Malfi' and 'The White Devil'. This course will consider important Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedies with an eye for the resonant personal, political, social and theatrical themes with which they entertained audiences - issues including nationality, class and religion - considering closely the engagements of the plays with such matters, and so exploring the meanings this exciting genre held for its early audiences.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 end-of-course essay (3500 words) (90%)
SAM (10%)


For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be given, on request, ongoing feedback on their performance in seminar. Group discussions will be formative in ensuring that all students understand what is expected of them.

Feedback

Written feedback provided through the English Programme's standard essay-feedback sheets and through its standard Seminar Assessment Mark sheets.
Verbal feedback to student questions given through seminars.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr J King

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of the Head of School.

Co-requisites

NOTE: This course is not available in 2013/14

Overview

This course examines some of the most important contemporary women's fiction set in the Victorian period. Much of this writing deals with aspects of women's experience rarely openly discussed in Victorian fiction, but in the process it also explores the ways in which gender itself - what it means to be a man or a woman - was constructed by nineteenth-century science and literature. The course begins by looking at Charlotte Bronte's novel, Jane Eyre, and Jean Rhys's novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, which in 1966 provided a feminist 'response' to Bronte's novel. Such revisions of Victorian fiction and history became increasingly popular in the final decades of the twentieth-century, and it is this body of writing which will form the main focus of the course.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%), in-course assessment: essay (40%), group project (10%), and seminar work (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr H Lynch

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English honours Programme.

Notes

This course is not available in 2013-14

Overview

The imaginative and intellectual force of Milton's poetry is inseparable from his mastery of the art of polemic. A propagandist for Cromwell's government, Milton was also a vigorous participant in other controversies, about freedom of speech, religious toleration, monarchy and democracy, and the rights of women. This course examines Milton's poetry and prose alongside other seventeenth-century poets and pamphleteers, including Marvell, Lovelace, Vaughan, Dryden, Nedham, Winstanley, Speght and Sexby.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%), in-course assessment: 3000 word essay (40%), presentation (10%); and seminar work (10%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Formative assessment will be given to students individually upon request.

Feedback

Written feedback will be provided through standard departmental feedback forms as attached to all essays, with oral feedback in seminars and in response to student queries.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr H Lynch and Dr T Baker

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English honours Programme.

Notes

This course is not available in 2013-14

Overview

This course examines the development of the short story during the last two hundred years, from Washington Irving, Hawthorne, and Melville, through Hemingway, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf and Mansfield, to Raymond Carver and a selection of contemporary writers. The course will consider the distinctiveness of the short story as an art form, its techniques and applications, and the factors that have influenced its evolution.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%), in-course assessment: 2500-3000 word essay (40%), group project (10%); and seminar work (10%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Formative assessment will be given to students individually upon request.

Feedback

Written feedback will be provided through standard departmental feedback forms as attached to all essays, with oral feedback in seminars and in response to student queries.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr S Pugh

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

This course is not available in 2013-14

Overview

This module examines the encounter between Spenser, the greatest poet of the sixteenth century, and his Queen, the powerful and enigmatic Elizabeth Tudor. Author of the first epic in English, ostensibly praising Elizabeth as 'Gloriana', Spenser is often regarded as an apologist for her regime, but he also wrote a biting satire which was recalled by the censor, and lived for most of his career in what he saw as exile in wartorn Ireland. We read selections from across his varied output, focussing on some of his many depictions of the Virgin Queen, ranging from the overt to the veiled, from the celebratory to the comic and harshly critical. Like many Renaissance poets, Spenser often creates meaning in his poems through allusion to classical literature and myth. Passages from the Augustan poets Virgil, Horace and Ovid, read in translation, will enrich our understanding of his complex and ambiguous relationship with political power.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 2,500-3,000 word essay (80%); seminar work (20%); frequency of participation and quality of ideas presented in class discussion.

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on essay; detailed oral feedback on comments in class.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A. Lewis

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This is a 12-week course.

Overview

Psychology, neurology and criminology came to the forefront of late-nineteenth-century thought about a number of pressing issues and anxieties: post-Darwinian fears of decline and degeneration; decadence and neurasthenia; the strains upon and secrets within city spaces; New (and fallen) Women, and imperialist expansion and its attendant masculinities.

Examining interdisciplinary exchange between literature and sciences of mind in the period 1880-1901, we will engage in close reading of several key texts to generate an understanding of the role and scope of the novel genre at this time of social, cultural and aesthetic upheaval. Authors studied may include Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and H.G. Wells.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

Two 2500 - 3000 word essays (40% each) and seminar assessment (20%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be encouraged to seek formative feedback on their seminar performance. In-seminar discussions will aid students in knowing what is expected of them in the course.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essays; detailed oral feedback on seminar participation (content and delivery).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr C Jones

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

Challenging conventional boundaries between the humanities and the sciences, this course explores the relationship between literature and medicine, and asks what kind of ground the two disciplines might share and how they might enrich one another. The first part of the course considers the use and abuse of literary concepts in medical practice and of medical ideas and history in literature. The second part examines literary representations of the physician and narratives of illness, focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The third part explores the representation of psychiatry and psychiatric theory in twentieth- and twenty-first century literature.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay, 1,500-2,000 words, (20%); 1 essay 3,000-3,500 words, (60%); in-class presentation (10%); seminar assessment mark (10%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Plenary, group and individual discussion. Written feedback on first essay (mid-semester). Written feedback on second essay (after end of semester).
Written feedback on presentation and seminar performance (after end of semester).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr W Barras

Pre-requisites

Notes

Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Overview

The course will cover the following areas:
the philosophical frameworks underpinning different research approaches;
effective strategies for reading research papers in order to carry out a literature review;
strategies for the design and conduct of research projects, including framing hypotheses which can be tested;
ethical constraints and considerations in Linguistic research;
different approaches to collecting data, including a range of sampling strategies and their benefits and limitations;
qualitative approaches, including participant observation and ethnographic methods;
quantitative approaches, such as structured questionnaires and variationist sociolinguistic methods;
elementary statistical analysis of quantitative data.

We will work with examples of published research articles to illustrate these points.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar and 1 one-hour small-group tutorial per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment. A 3000 word written assignment considering aspects of research methodology covered in the course. This will take the form of a research proposal for a dissertation, covering proposed research questions, data collection and data analysis methods, comparing and contrasting possible research approaches and giving a rationale for the methods proposed, drawing on the material covered in the course. (90%); Seminar Assessment Mark (10%)

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Formative assessment will be given to students individually upon request.

Feedback

Feedback on the essay will be given in writing on the cover sheet. Students will also be invited to discuss their performance with their tutor.

The Seminar Assessment Mark will be made available to students along with a generally brief written report from the tutor. Students will also be encouraged to speak to their tutor about the assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr R Millar

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of Head of the School.

Notes

This is a six week course.

Overview

This course discusses the ways that society and individuals interact in terms of language. It pays particular attention to the nature of bilingualism within a society; how a nation can cope with (and benefit from) widespread bilingualism; how lesser-used languages can either survive or cease to be used when they are under pressure from larger-scale languages; and the manners in which 'new' languages can be 'planned' and standardised.

Structure

1 two-hour informal lecture and 1 one-hour small-scale seminar.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment; essay of between 2,500 and 3,000 words (80%), and seminar work (20%).

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Feedback

Formative assessment will be given to students individually upon request.

Feedback on in-course reports will be given in writing on the cover sheet. Students will also be invited to discuss their performance with their tutor.

The Seminar Assessment Mark will be made available to students along with a generally brief written report from the tutor. Students will also be encouraged to speak to their tutor about the assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr A Lumsden

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of the Head of School.


NOTE: This course is not available in 2013/14

Notes

This is a 6-week course. As the texts studied in this course are long, students are advised to read ahead over the summer.

Overview

Where does our concept of nationhood come from? What is its connection to our national literature? How is it related to representations of the past? These are questions which vex post-devolution Scotland as it seeks to establish its cultural identity. They are also issues interrogated in the work of one of Scotland’s greatest writers, Walter Scott. This course will explore the relationship between Scott’s fiction and Scotland via a selection of his novels. It will also consider more general theories of the relationship between literature and national cultural identities.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: essay (80%) and seminar work (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Prof. A Lumsden

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

Walter Scott is one of the most influential novelists and his work has been transformed into many different forms including dramas, chapbooks, operas, graphic novels and films. This course will draw on the University of Aberdeen's outstanding collection of Scott material to explore the relationship between Scott's fictions and the many transformations of it housed in the Bernard C. Lloyd Collection, in the special collections centre. Seminars will involve discussion of a range of Scott novels and will use digitised versions of adaptations and reconfigurations of these texts. The course will consider the relationship between these novels and the transformations of them into new forms through the frameworks of adaptation and cultural memory theories. Novels to be discussed will include a selection of three from Waverley, Rob Roy, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, The Bride of Lammermoor and Ivanhoe.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 3,000 word essay (80%), Seminar Assessment Mark (20%).

Resit: For honours students only; candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written feedback will be given on the essay. Oral feedback on essay and seminar perfomance will be given upon request.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr S Alcobia-Murphy

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

The predominant genre in contemporary Northern Irish fiction is that of the thriller, one that puts the sex back into semtex. Such a genre, known as 'Troubles Trash', often perpetuates the myth of Belfast as a knowable city, a 'hellish stasis left behind by world history'. The novels studied on this course offer an implicit critique of this genre. Themes studied on this course include: the ability to represent violence in literature; the use (and abuse) of history as a representational strategy; identity politics; the impact of the Troubles (and the current ceasefire) on Northern Irish literature.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar every 2 weeks (running for 12 weeks).

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (100%); one 3,000 word essay (80%); 2 individual presentations (10%); Seminar Assessment Mark (10%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essay; detailed oral feedback on presentation content and delivery.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Prof. D Hughes

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of Head of School.

This course is not available in 2013/14

Overview

The years after 1660 saw an intellectual and moral revolution. Some thinkers began to view human life and thought as purely material processes, and to regard the soul as a meaningless concept. Increased global exploration brought awareness that there were no universal ideas of sexual morality. For a relatively short period, dramatists explored the nature of human sexuality with a freedom and open-mindedness that were not to be equalled until the twentieth century. This course will cover the rise and fall of sex comedy. It will include plays by Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her living as a creative writer, and works by Wycherley, Etherege, Vanbrugh, Congreve, and Farquhar.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: Essay (80%), and seminar assessment (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr W Price

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

The course offers students the opportunity to develop their understanding of and practical skills in the writing of prose fiction and poetry. It thus contributes to their future career potential (whether as creative or other kinds of professional writers) and provides them with a better understanding of how literary works are constructed.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Short folio of creative work in poetry or prose (80%); Seminar Assessment Mark (20%).

1 completed portfolio of fiction of 1,500-3,500 words total; or 1 short portfolio of poetry comprising 60/120 lines (80%); course work leading to the production of 3 original first drafts in any literary form (20%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Weekly feedback on journal work and class contributions.

Detailed written feedback on summative assessment.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr T Tricker

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This course is not available in 2013-14.

Overview

This course offers an opportunity to study Auden's 1930s poetry, a body of work which is coming to be seen as central to the development of writing in English in the twentieth century.

The dramatic text Paid on Both Sides will be discussed at the beginning of the course following a rehearsed reading prepared and presented by the course participants.

A sample of poems from the early period of Auden's work will be examined and discussed in seminars.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attemp: Essay (3,000 words) (80%); Seminar assessment (20%) (presentation 10%, participation 10%)>

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Feedback provided as ongoing in seminars as part of seminar preparation and presentation
Commentary and constructive criticism as part of feedback from written work, and the essay.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Rist

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

This course is devoted to the critical reading of the foremost epic in English, Milton's Paradise Lost, which will be considered in its entirety. Seminars will address key, critical issues for the poem as they arise in the weekly, prescribed reading. Topics for consideration will include the role and use of epic conventions in the poem, the nature of Milton's seventeenth-century Christian thinking, the conception of 'heroism', and the success (or failure) of the poem's almost hubristic ambition: to 'justify the ways of God to men'.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Essay 3,000 words (80%); seminar assessment mark (20%)

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Feedback on the course essay will be through the department's standard essay-cover sheet, and also through comments within essays. Feedback on the SAM will be through the department's standard SAM-form.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr D Wheatley

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English honours programmes

Overview

'Life is an affair of people not of places', Wallace Stevens wrote, 'but for me it is an affair of places and that is the trouble.' Much of the best modern and contemporary writing has been deeply imbued with a sense of place, and in this course we will examine our own writing practice in relation to place and topography. Philip Larkin spoke of the 'Importance of Elsewhere', but how do we preserve the integrity of our 'elsewheres' without succumbing to distortion and exoticization? We will study examples in poetry and prose from Elizabeth Bishop and J.M. Synge and the more unclassifiable work of Ian Hamilton Finlay. In Finlay's work we see a strong element of the 'site-specific', in texts designed for installation in the locations that inspired them. How might we go beyond existing genres and categories and allow the writing of place to find its own forms? Issues of historical context, atmosphere, setting and form will be studied, and students' work subject to detailed critique and workshopping by the group.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: Short folio of creative work in poetry or prose, (80%), Seminar Assessment Mark (20%)

Resit: 1 completed portfolio of fiction of 1500-3500 words total, or 1 short portfolio of poetry comprising 60-120 lines (80%); course work leading to the production of 3 original first drafts in any literary form (20%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will compose a course journal. Throughout the course, students will receive regular oral feedback from both class tutor and class members in focussed workshop sessions. The re-drafting of coursework will also be subject to detailed, constructive feedback in both written and verbal form.

Feedback

Weekly feedback on journal work and class contributions.

Detailed written feedback on summative assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr C A Jones

Pre-requisites

Available only to student in Programme Year 4, or by permission of the Head of School.

This course is not available in 2013/14

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

Overview

This course examines the emergence of a distinctive New England literary culture in the nineteenth-century, focusing on the 'Renaissance' of 1830-60. This period saw a concentration in New England of a group of authors who declared America's literary independence from Old England, redefined the notion of regionalism and nationhood, and transformed received modes of writing to create a new aesthetic and a new tradition. This course explores these developments through a range of texts, including Hawthorne's short stories and 'international novel' The Marble Faun, Emerson's Essays, Poe's gothic tales, and Emily Dickinson's poems. The course also pays attention to the possibilities of tansatlantic comparative analysis.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: essay (80%), oral presentation (10%), and seminar work (10%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr D Wall

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This course is not available in 2013-14

Overview

One of the great insights of Romantic-period literature is that the life of the mind is not limited to consciousness. Dreams and visions, sometimes drug-induced, became a major preoccupation as poets explored subliminal and unconscious mental states, and the desires and anxieties which find their only expression in dream experience. The course features selected texts by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, William Blake, Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Felicia Hemans and Thomas De Quincey, and their presentation of dream experiences. By analysing the language used by these writers, the course aims to inculcate an enquiring attitude about underlying impulses and motivations which may be partially revealed in language.

Duncan Wu (Ed) Romanticism: An Authology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One essay 2,500-3,000 words (80%); seminar work (10%); individual presentation (10%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on their essay; detailed oral feedback for their contributions to class discussion.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Crotty

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course. This course will not be available in Session 2013/14.

Overview

This course will examine the full range of Burns’s work, from the early satires and verse epistles to ‘Tam o’Shanter’ and the later songs. Topics will include Burns’s deployment of a radically mixed Scots-English idiom, his interest in the cult of sentiment, and his involvement with political radicalism. The relationship of Burns to his literary predecessors, both vernacular and Augustan, will be examined, along with Burns’s influence on the subsequent generation of English Romantic poets.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: essay (80%), and seminar work (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr W Barras

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in programme year 4 or above, or by permission of the Head of School

Co-requisites

EL30JK or equivalent training in Phonetics.

Overview

Students will investigate ways in which sophisticated phonetic analysis can be applied to questions of language variation and change. Theoretical issues in sociolinguistics and phonetics will be addressed and students will be encouraged to question the approaches taken by different investigators. Alongside their reading of existing literature, students will extend their practical skills of phonetic analysis. This will ensure that students' knowledge and skills are sufficiently advanced to enable them to conduct a small-scale sociophonetic investigation. The course will cover investigations of speech perception as well as speech production.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar and 1 one-hour practical per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment; 2500-3000 word essay (50%); 1000 word lab report (40%); Seminar Assessment Mark 10%.

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Informal feedback will be given on practical exercises. Additional formative assessment will be given to students individually upon request.

Feedback

Feedback on the essay and lab report will be given in writing on the cover sheets. Students will also be invited to discuss their performance with their tutor.

The Seminar Assessment Mark will be made available to students along with a generally brief written report from the tutor. Students will also be encouraged to speak to their tutor about the assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T. Baker

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

Themes of religion and morality have long held a central place in the Scottish literary imagination, and have frequently been used as a means of addressing broad cultural issues. This course will introduce students to a wide range of novels concerned with the question of sin and the place of morality in contemporary society. Including texts from a wide variety of genres, ranging from thrillers to social realism, the course will focus on such issues as: the concept of 'good'; the relationship between individuals and communities; the relationship between regional and religious identity; and the legacy of Calvinism in a secular context. Authors to be discussed may include Neil M. Gunn, Muriel Spark, and A.L. Kennedy, and Christopher Brookmyre.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: continuous assessment: 3000 word essay (80%); oral presentation (10%); seminar work (10%)

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be asked to keep an informal course journal throughout the duration of the course.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essay; detailed oral feedback on presentation content and delivery.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr R Millar

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of the Head of the School.

Notes

This is a six week course.

Overview

Contact between languages is an inevitability. Language contact is also one of the central spurs of linguistic change. Often this contact is of short duration, and the influence of one language over another is small-scale and ephemeral; sometimes the contact has long-lasting and profound effects upon at least one of the languages concerned.
This course will discuss different types of language contact, their various effects, and the social and linguistic contexts from which they spring. It will consider contemporary contacts and those from the more distant past.

Structure

1 two-hour informal lecture and 1 one-hour small-scale seminar.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: essay of between 2,500-3,000 words in length (80%), and seminar work (20%).

Resit: No Resit.

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Feedback

Formative assessment will be given to students individually upon request.

Feedback on in-course reports will be given in writing on the cover sheet. Students will also be invited to discuss their performance with their tutor.

The Seminar Assessment Mark will be made available to students along with a generally brief written report from the tutor. Students will also be encouraged to speak to their tutor about the assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or above, or by permission of the Head of School.

Co-requisites

EL 30LQ

Notes

This course is not available in 2013-14

Overview

This course will provide students with an overview of the main American and Canadian dialects of English and discuss the processes through which they have become different from British English. Students will also learn about African American Vernacular English, both in terms of the divergence hypothesis and the origins debate. The course will also introduce students to the languages spoken in the United States and Canada both before and after the arrival of English and French colonists and the languages other than English spoken in North America today.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment: 1 essay (2,500-3,000 words) (80%); seminar assessment (20%).

Resit: Essay (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Prof. A Lumsden

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

'To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive' wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. During his life Stevenson made many journeys; around Scotland, to France, to California, and finally to the South Seas where he became 'Tusitala', the teller of tales. Travel is a central motif of his writing shaping both its subject matter and its themes. This course will explore the importance of travel in Stevenson's work investigating the impact of Stevenson's actual travels on his fiction and the extent to which his writing exploits this motif in order to explore philosophical concerns, offering 'journeys of the mind'. It will also consider the ways in which this shaping metaphor informs Stevenson's theories of writing as they emerge in his essays, suggesting a theory of creativity which often pre-empts both modernism and post-modernism. When considering Stevenson's South Seas tales we will also explore the ways in which his fiction may be read alongside modern post-colonial theories of writing.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 3,000 word essay (80%) and seminar performance mark (the SAM) (20%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Feedback will be by detailed written comments on the essay. Oral feedback will be given on essay and seminar performance on request.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr S. Alcobia-Murphy

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

How is the artist to respond when the virtual becomes the real and when words cannot carry the weight of trauma? How can an author avoid the accusations of voyeuristic prurience or crass opportunism when he or she attempts to re-present events of public violence? This multi-disciplinary course examines work from a wide range of genres, including fiction, poetry, film and graphic art, and looks at the difficulties of inscribing trauma and the ethics and praxis of remembrance. The key events covered on this course are the Holocaust, 9-11, the Gulf War and Bloody Sunday.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week (over 6 weeks)

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (100%): 1x 3000 word essay (80%); presentation (10%); Seminar Assessment Mark (10%)

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essay; detailed oral feedback on presentation content and delivery.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr W Price

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

A troubled preoccupation with the complexities of self-hood and cultural belonging has been a dominant characteristic of American poetry since Whitman and Dickinson. In Modernism and Beat experimentation and in confessional poetry we see both the formal and thematic radicalism of 19th Century American poetry extended and interrogated by 20th Century voices. Spanning a selection of influential modern American poets ranging from Frost and William Carlos Williams through to Plath, Ginsberg and Snyder, this course will consider both the distinctively American qualities of the works in question and their significance in the context of literary and cultural modernity in general.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 3000 word essay (80%); Seminar Assessment Mark (20%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Course Journal.

Feedback

Weekly verbal feedback on journal content and class contributions more generally.

Detailed written feedback will be provided for summative assessment.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

Available only to Senior Honours Language and Linguistic students.

Overview

This course will provide students with guidance on writing a dissertation on a topic approved by the Head of School. Within reason, both topic and means of research are up to each student. All students will be supervised by a highly qualified member of academic staff.

Structure

At least 3 one-hour seminars.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Dissertation of between 7,000 and 8,000 words in length (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students will be given ongoing assessment throughout the life of the dissertation by their supervisor.

Feedback

Marking the dissertations takes place after the end of the teaching term. Students will, however, be given regular feedback on their work as it develops.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr S Pugh

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or above, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

This course is not available in 2013-14.

Overview

From More's Utopia, a traveller's tale of a land called 'No-Place', through the Arcadias of Elizabeth pastoral, to the Hesperidean fantasies of Civil-War royalists and Milton's evocation of a lost Paradise, Renaissance literature is full of mythical or imaginary lands. For Sidney, this independence from reality, this ability to create new worlds, is what elevates literature above all other pursuits. But these fictional settings are not escapist: rather they offer oblique, often radical perspectives on contemporary England. In doing so they pose fundamental questions about literature's relation to its readers and role in society, and suggest some startling answers.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: essay (80%), and seminar assessment mark (20%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Gordon

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

London in the early modern period was a centre of government, a thriving commercial hub and one of the fastest growing cities in Europe. It was also a centre for literary production across a range of genres, from plays to pageants, from poetry to pamphlets. This course will examine the various ways in which the city is represented in the literature of the period and will explore such topics as the place of the stage; sin and the city; ceremony and festivity; commerce and the community; and urban satire.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%) and in-course assessment: essay (40%), group project (10%) and seminar work (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr H Lynch

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English honours Programme.

Overview

Renaissance literature is full of temptress and enchantress figures drawn from classical epic and medieval romance, refashioned to reflect the desires and anxieties of the early modern world. The course explores the development of this archetype, showing the psychological, religious and political concerns it encodes, and its power as an artistic motif in works by Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton and others. It enables students to study a mixture of poetry and prose and to examine works by three great early modern writers, across several genres, in light of renaissance poetics, 'psychology' and politics, and of the theories of language and the imagination which they both encapsulate and transform.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%), in-course assessment: 3000 word essay (40%), presentation (10%); and seminar work (10%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be given the opportunity of finding out how well they have performed in seminars as an ongoing feature of the learning process.

Formative assessment will be given to students individually upon request.

Feedback

Written feedback will be provided through standard departmental feedback forms as attached to all essays, with oral feedback in seminars and in response to student queries.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Pugh

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

The module looks at a wide range of Spenser's work in different genres, including a substantial proportion of his epic poem, and studies this in the contexts of contemporary political history, Spenser's biography, and the literary traditions stemming from Virgil and Petrarch.

Structure

1 two hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Essay 1 (40%): 2,500-3,000 words
Essay 2 (40%): 2,500-3,000 words
Seminar work (20%): regularity of participation and quality of ideas presented in class discussion.

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written and oral feedback on all assessed work.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr A. Lewis

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This course is not available in 2013-14.

Overview

What is the Neo-Victorian novel? How can modern forms of fiction complicate our understanding of nineteenth-century literature and culture? And to what extent does historical fiction deepen present-day debates about representations of class, race, gender, sexuality, science and selfhood?

We will consider a range of literary engagements with the Victorian novel from the 1960s to the present, including feminist, queer, postmodern and postcolonial approaches and their theoretical contexts. Whether rewriting Victorian themes; reinterpreting well-known characters and authors; rediscovering Victorian narrative structures or recovering 'lost' nineteenth-century perspectives, the problems of proximity and remoteness can be seen to inform imaginative recuperation of the Victorians? own array of competing histories.

This course will proceed from familiarity with key nineteenth-century texts and contexts to enable close analysis of prequels, sequels, offshoots and alternatives by authors such as Jean Rhys, Graham Swift, Sarah Waters, Peter Carey, Matthew Kneale, Lloyd Jones, James Wilson and Valerie Martin. With attentiveness to intertextuality, appropriation and adaptation we will work towards an understanding of the continued influence of Victorian developments of the novel genre in modern literature.

Structure

1 x two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: 3000 word essay (80%); Seminar Assessment (20%)

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essay; detailed oral feedback on seminar participation (content and delivery).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr A. Lewis

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

This course is not available in 2013-14.

Overview

Psychology, neurology and criminology came to the forefront of late-nineteenth-century thought about a number of pressing issues and anxieties: post-Darwinian fears of decline and degeneration; decadence and neurasthenia; the strains upon and secrets within city spaces; New (and fallen) Women, and imperialist expansion and its attendant masculinities.

Examining interdisciplinary exchange between literature and sciences of mind in the period 1880-1901, we will engage in close reading of several key texts to generate an understanding of the role and scope of the novel genre at this time of social, cultural and aesthetic upheaval. Authors studied may include Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and H.G. Wells.

Structure

1 x two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: 3,000 word essay (80%) Seminar Assessment (20%)

Resit: 3,000 word essay (100%)

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essay; detailed oral feedback on seminar participation (content and delivery).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Lewis

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English honours Programme.

Overview

What is the Neo-Victorian novel? How can modern forms of fiction complicate our understanding of nineteenth-century literature and culture? And to what extent does historical fiction deepen present-day debates about representations of class, race, gender, sexuality, science and selfhood?
We will consider a range of literary engagements with the Victorian novel from the 1960s to the present, including feminist, queer, postmodern and postcolonial approaches and their theoretical contexts. Whether rewriting Victorian themes; reinterpreting well-known characters and authors; rediscovering Victorian narrative structures or recovering 'lost' nineteenth-century perspectives, the problems of proximity and remoteness can be seen to inform imaginative recuperation of the Victorians' own array of competing histories.
This course will proceed from familiarity with key nineteenth-century texts and contexts to enable close analysis of prequels, sequels, offshoots and alternatives by authors such as Jean Rhys, Graham Swift, Sarah Waters, Peter Carey, Matthew Kneale, Lloyd Jones, James Wilson and Valerie Martin. With attentiveness to intertextuality, appropriation and adaptation we will work towards an understanding of the continued influence of Victorian developments of the novel genre in modern literature.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: Two 2500 - 3000 word essays (40% each) and seminar assessment (20%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be encouraged to seek formative feedback on their seminar performance. In-seminar discussions will aid students in knowing what is expected of them in the course.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essays; detailed oral feedback on seminar participation (content and delivery).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Baker

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or the English Programme.

Overview

The past twenty years have been a dramatic resurgence of the Gothic tradition in Scottish literature, with almost every major Scottish author making use of the form. The Gothic novel is often seen as a way of simultaneously re-examining the past and addressing the concerns of the present. Modern Scottish writers have used Gothic themes and techniques to address key cultural issues of politics, history, and sexuality. The course will examine a range of modern Gothic fiction, including novels and short stories, and will consider: realism and surrealism; the role of the fantastic in contemporary Scottish fiction; and the representation of history, sexuality, politics, and religion. Authors to be discussed may include Iain Banks, Alasdair Gray, Alice Thompson, and Michel Faber.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment; 3,000 word essay (80%), oral presentation (10%0, seminar work (10%).

Resit: For honours students only; candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Students will be asked to keep an informal course journal throughout the length of the course.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essay; detailed oral feedback on presentation content and delivery.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Wills

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

This course is not available in 2013-14.

Overview

This course introduces students to a large and important body of medieval vernacular literature: the sagas of the Icelanders. The sagas are a fascinating and entertaining literature concerning the settlement period of Iceland, with themes centred around family and honour relationships and the problems of living in a remote and hostile environment, without centralised government or law enforcement. The sagas of the Icelanders influenced English and Scottish authors such as Coleridge, Blake and Scott, but they are also significant as a body of colonial and post-colonial literature from the Middle Ages.

This course will introduce some major works from the sagas of the Icelanders. It will cover the saga form, both textual and narrative features, as well as providing the historical, social and legal background to the works. In addition, the course will examine the sagas as colonial and settlement literature, using a comparative approach with modern literary forms.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 3,000-word essay (80%); seminar assessment (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr R O'Connor

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This course will not be available in 2012/13.

Overview

Predicting the future became something of a national obsession in Britain between the Franco-Prussian War and the Second World War. This turbulent period saw the headlong acceleration of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the British Empire; it also saw sweeping social changes, the rise of rival empires, and the birth of new ideologies such as Socialism and Marxism. What did the future hold for Britain, for Western civilization, and for the human race as a whole? British writers vied with each other in playing on their readers' hopes and fears, presenting exotic and radically divergent visions of the future in fictional form, ranging from nightmares of enemy invasion or racial degeneration to distant prospects of a socialist paradise or a drug-induced utopia. This course examines the fictional futures produced in Britain between 1870 and 1935 in their cultural contexts, exploring the interplay between imaginative fantasy and the real-life concerns of the writers and readers.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 2,500-3,000 word essay (80%); Seminar Assessment Mark (20%)(consisting of 10% presentation, 10% seminar participation).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

By returning a written feedback form and discussing the essay with the student in a one-to-one feedback session.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr C. Jones

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

This course is not available in 2013/14

Overview

This course will examine a full range of Byron's work, from 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', which established his fame as a poet, to the oriental tales and verse dramas, and his epic 'Don Juan'. Topics to be discussed will include: autobiography and writing; poetic tradition and experimentation; the Byronic hero; cross-dressing; Byron's heroines; the art of pleasure; political and social satire. Attention will also be given to Byron's relation to his contemporaries, and the critical debates about his life and work.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: Essay (2500-3000 words) 80%; Presentation 10%, Seminar Assessment 10%

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

plenary, group and individual discussion

Feedback

written feedback on essay
written feedback on presentation/
written feedback on seminar performance

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Prof. A Lumsden

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6 week course.

Overview

The North-east is a region which offers particular resonances to themes of Scottish literary identity, defining its own space at the margins of both central Scotland and the wider parameters of the UK. This course considers fictions set in the North-east examining the ways in which they both interrogate the marginal status of the region and offer wider reflections on identity as it is constructed via gender, language, and social, geographical and cultural contexts. Writers studied will include Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Nan Shepherd and Jessie Kesson.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st attempt: In course assessment: essay (80%), and seminar work (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor A Spence

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English honours Programmes.

Overview

This course will enable students to use their own experience as a step towards creating their own fictional worlds. It will stress the importance of close observation and attention to detail, the use of all the senses, in short fiction or poetry that is vivid and alive. Particular attention will be given to the use of dialogue in defining character and driving a narrative. In-class exercises, discussion, and individual feedback from the tutor on students' written work combine to build confidence and a critical self-awareness as writing skills are developed and enhanced.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: Short folio of creative work in poetry or prose, (80%), Seminar Assessment Mark (20%)

Resit: 1 completed portfolio of fiction of 1500-3500 words total, or 1 short portfolio of poetry comprising 60-120 lines (80%); course work leading to the production of 3 original first drafts in any literary form (20%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new folio.

Formative Assessment

Students will compose a course journal throughout the course, which will be used for self-assessment. Throughout the course, students will receive regular oral feedback from both class tutor and class members in focussed workshop sessions. The re-drafting of coursework will also be subject to detailed, constructive feedback in both written and verbal form.

Feedback

Weekly feedback on journal work and class contributions.

Detailed written feedback on summative assessment.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Prof. B Fennell

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or above or by permission of the Head of School.

Co-requisites

Normally EL 30RC.

Overview

The course explores a variety of professional communities of practice from the point of view of language use. Topics discussed include:

Language and Law
Language and Law Enforcement
Language and Health Care
Doctor-Patient Interaction
Talking Therapies
Organisational Communication
Talk and Organisational Interaction
Structure of Organisational Communications
Persuasive Discourse (Advertising, etc).

Students will apply a variety of linguistic methods to reveal the relationship between language, communicative practice and professional activities, in order to increase their understanding of language and enhancing professional practice. Where possible instructions from Law, Medical Science and other areas will discuss language in their field.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week, 1 one-hour text discussions and/or student presentations per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 2 linguistic analyses (40% each), seminar assessment (20%).

Resit: 1 two-hour examination.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor D Duff

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

From Gawain and the Green Knight to Goldfinger, Walpole's The Castle of Otranto to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, romance is a genre which embraces some of the greatest works of literature as well as being a vehicle for some of its most seductive fictions. In recent years, romance has also been a focus for theoretical debates about the nature of genre, attracting the attention of major twentieth-century theorists. The course explores this rich literary and critical tradition, analysing works in verse, prose, drama (and film) from six centuries while also investigating modern theories of genre. Among the authors studied are Marie de France, Spenser, Shakespeare, Austen, Keats, Browning, T.S. Eliot and David Lodge.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (50%)
continuous assessment: 3,000 word essay (30%), oral presentation (10%), seminar work (10%).

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essay; detailed oral feedback on presentation content and delivery.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr D. Wheatley

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

This course is not available in 2013/14

Overview

The comic modernism of such writers as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien, and John Banville draws on earlier Irish tradition (Swiftian satire, the comical incoherencies and uncommon indecencies of Sterne, the macabre laughter of Maturin, Wildean word-play). This course aims to trace a genealogy of Irish prose fiction by reference to the role of laughter and comedy in driving formal literary innovation. In addition to gaining knowledge of the historical development of Irish prose fiction, and of its impact upon and interaction with other literary traditions, students will have the opportunity to develop an understanding of the different literary modalities of comedy (wit and word-play, grotesque and macabre humour, parody and satire) and of the various theories of laughter as a psycho-social and aesthetic event.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: essay 3000-3500 words (80%); presentation (students submit written draft) (20%)

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on their essays; detailed oral feedback for their presentations.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A. Janus

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

'To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail.' From his first successful piece of anti-theatre, 'Waiting for Godot', a drama in two acts where 'nothing happens'twice', Samuel Beckett applied his artistic credo to every genre and aesthetic form he worked in, turning the medium against itself and reducing it to the limits of its possibility. From his 1957 radio play 'All That Fall,' to the tape-recorded monologue of 'Krapp's Last Tape' (1958) to his 'Film' of 1965 starring Buster Keaton, to his 1976 prose piece 'Fizzles' illustrated by Jasper Johns, Beckett never ceased to interrogate the limits of aesthetic form and to challenge the audience to look, listen and read in new and difficult ways.

Setting a representative selection from Beckett's later theatre and short prose texts against his work for radio, television, and film, this course will evaluate the techniques behind Beckett's self-declared 'art of failure', analyzing the impact of new technology (radio, tape-recorder, television, cinema) on old media (print, stage), and exploring the range and mode of aesthetic perception associated with each medium.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Essay 1 2,500-3,000 words (40%); Essay 2 2,500-3,000 words (40%); Seminar work (20%) regularity of participation and quality of ideas presented in class discussion.

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written feedback on their essays; detailed oral feedback for their presentations.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr E Elliott

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Overview

This course looks at the ways in which Scottish writers reimagine the literary past from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. What does it mean for writers such as Robert Henryson and William Dunbar to invoke the memory of Chaucer, or for Allan Ramsay to publish renaissance poetry in his collection, The Ever Green (1724)? The course will consider the attitudes to Scottish language and literature reflected in such texts, and the role of such texts in shaping our own conceptions of Scotland and Scottish literary tradition.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 end-of-course 3000-word essay (80%), Seminar Assessment Mark (20%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Written feedback given to students through the English Programme's standard essay-cover sheets and Seminar Assessment Mark sheets.
Oral feedback given to students through verbal response to their questions as raised in seminars.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr H Lynch

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English honours Programmes.

Overview

We are accustomed to short fiction and lyric poetry, and to the self-expressive paradigm in generating literature, but there have been other short forms in the past, and writers who looked at the form, and at the process and purpose of writing, very differently than we do now - just as there are currently emergent short forms that have their own 'rules' and suppositions. The course enables students to explore less familiar short forms from other historical periods, as well as to look afresh at virtual forms from our own time such as facebook profiles, tweets and blogs. It will explore such questions as: what difference does it make if we look at writing as moral instruction, or as an act of persuasion rather than expression, as when literature was a branch of rhetoric, a discipline in which all writers were trained? How do writers persuade us see the world as they do or to believe, however briefly, in the fictional or poetic worlds they have created? The course seeks to discover and unsettle a few of our certainties, and to furnish enabling and liberating models for creative work. Like the brief texts examined on the course, this work may draw on some of the same resources as short fiction or poetry, but also tap other energies, such as argumentative, didactic or downright abusive. Texts used will range from Aesop to Kafka, Medieval poet Marie de France to Katherine Mansfield, Swift to Dickens, Basho to Pound, and Shakespeare to Spence. Taught in one seminar per week, using analysis of a piece of short writing as a catalyst for students, writing, involving plenary and small group discussion, and individual writing exercises; part of each class will be devoted to writing, peer response, reflection and feedback.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

1st Attempt: Short folio of creative work in poetry or prose, (80%), Seminar Assessment Mark (20%)

Resit: 1 completed portfolio of fiction of 1500-3500 words total, or 1 short portfolio of poetry comprising 60-120 lines (80%); course work leading to the production of 3 original first drafts in any literary form (20%)

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Composing a course journal is part of the formative nature of the class. Throughout the course, students will receive regular oral feedback from both class tutor and class members in focussed workshop sessions. The re-drafting of coursework will also be subject to detailed, constructive feedback in both written and verbal form.

Feedback

Weekly feedback on journal work and class contributions.

Detailed written feedback on summative assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Baker

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 of the English Programme.

Notes

This is a 6-week course. This course will not be available in 2012/13.

Overview

With the installation of a Scot as British poet laureate, the creation of a new laureateship for Scotland, the continued success of a dedicated Scottish poetry library, and a disproportionate number of Scots winning major poetry prizes, it is arguable that poetry is more than ever at the forefront of the Scottish literary scene. This course will examine a wide range of contemporary Scottish poetry, including both individual poems and single-authored collections, and will consider: the use of traditional and experimental forms; the relationship between poetry and the environment; the use of poetry as a philosophical or theological form; themes of exile and belonging; the relationship between Scots, English, and Gaelic language writing; and poetic ideas of the local and the national. Authors to be discussed may include Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson, John Burnside, Robin Robertson, Jen Hadfield, J.O. Morgan, Aonghas MacNeacail, John Glenday, and Christine de Luca.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: continuous assessment; 3,000 word essay (80%); oral presentation (10%); seminar work (10%).

For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Feedback

Detailed written comments on essay; detailed oral feedback on presentation content and delivery.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Wills

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This course is not available in 2013-14.

Overview

The Old English poem Beowulf has been the subject of an enormous amount of scholarly attention. Its value comes from the portrayal of legendary and historical events of the Dark Ages in Scandinavia, but is also one of the most subtle and complex works of early medieval vernacular literature. This course introduces the poem in translation, with seminars on the text itself, the social and historical background and other issues such as dating and the Beowulf manuscript. In addition, this course will introduce students to Old English language as an aid to understanding the poem.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 3,000 word essay (80%); seminar assessment (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr M Garner

Pre-requisites

EL 35LQ Language: Variation and Change. This requirement may be waived with permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course. This course will not be available in 2013/14.

Overview

The course will examine the nature of discourse, and consider a variety of views from within and outside the discipline of linguistics. It will consider how the understanding of discourse is determined by theoretical perspectives, how this in turn influences the mode of analysis. The basic principles and methods of application of several analytical approaches will be presented, including conversation analysis, genre analysis, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. Each will be considered in the light of the information it provides about different aspects of society and social interaction within its cultural context.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: one essay (80%), and seminar work (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr A Janus

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or above, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

Overview

The comic modernism of such writers as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien, and John Banville draws on earlier Irish tradition (Swiftian satire, the 'comical incoherencies and uncommon indecencies' of Sterne, the macabre laughter of Maturin, Wildean word-play). This course aims to trace a genealogy of Irish prose fiction by reference to the role of laughter and comedy in driving formal literary innovation. In addition to gaining knowledge of the historical development of Irish prose fiction, students will have the opportunity to develop an understanding of the different literary modalities of comedy (wit and word-play, grotesque and macabre humour, parody and satire) and of the various theories of laughter as a psycho-social and aesthetic event.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar weekly.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Essay (80%), and seminar assessment mark (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor D Hughes

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4, or by permission of Head of School.

Notes

The years after 1660 saw an intellectual and moral revolution. Some thinkers began to view human life and thought as purely material processes, and to regard the soul as a meaningless concept. Increased global exploration brought awareness that there were no universal ideas of sexual morality. For a relatively short period, dramatists explored the nature of human sexuality with a freedom and open-mindedness that were not to be equalled until the twentieth century. This course will cover the rise and fall of sex comedy. It will include plays by Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her living as a creative writer, and works by Wycherley, Etherege, Vanbrugh, Congreve, and Farquhar.

Overview

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: Essay (80%), and seminar assessment (20%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr T Wills

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in programme year 3 or by permission of the Head of School

Overview

Scotland and England produced some of the great literary works of late medieval Europe. This course introduces some of the major works of Middle English and Scots from the 14th and 15th centuries. It focuses on Middle English and Scots as literary languages, and equips students with an understanding of literature and society in one of the richest periods of literary production in Britain. Texts to be covered include a selection from works by Barbour, Henryson and Dunbar; the Gawain Poet; Piers Plowman plus medieval lyrics and mystery plays.

Structure

One 1 hour lecture and one 2-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st attempt: One 2 hour exam (50%), continuous assessment: essay (30%, presentation (10%), seminar work (10%)

Resit: 1 two hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Feedback