ENGL2151: The Literature of Emotion, 1740-1814 (Special Topic)

• Any Single or Joint Honours finalist student wishing to take this Special Topic must have satisfactorily completed the required number of core modules. Combined Honours and Outside Honours students must have satisfactorily completed either two Level 1 core introductory modules, or at least one Level 1 core module and one further lecture based module in English at Level 2

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• to explore the origins, nature and development of sensibility in the literature of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the process, the module cuts across traditional division of eighteenth-century from Romantic literature and encourages consideration of continuities, as well as interrogation of terms such as pre-Romanticism.
• to help students to think historically about the ways in which the understanding, representation and significance of emotional response in literature has changed and developed over time.
• to examine these things primarily in the fiction of the period, but also with some reference to contemporary drama and poetry and to relevant selected contextual material such as, for example, passages from the writings of George Cheyne, Adam Smith, David Hume and Edmund Burke.
• to look closely at the ways in which sensibility is bound up with other important areas of debate in the period. We shall consider such things as its relation to social rank, medical discourses, understandings of both femininity and masculinity, the rise of commerce and ideas about the nature of community and nationhood.

• The module will be organized in broadly chronological sequence from 1740 to 1814. Core texts will typically be a selection of about six to nine novels from the fiction of sentimental novelists of the period including such writers as Richardson, Sarah Fielding, Frances Sheridan, Goldsmith, Sterne, Mackenzie, Wollstonecraft, Burney and Austen. Reference to drama and poetry of the period, and to contextual material, will be introduced when relevant. Seminars will focus on questions such as: to what extent did sensibility offer a radically new affirmation of individual feeling? How far is such affirmation challenged in literature by anxieties about the dangers of excessive passion? Does sensibility provide a basis for a critique of a commercializing society, or is it in fact bound up with commercial values, and in what ways? To what extent do men and women of feeling in literature differ and what do these differences indicate about the gender politics of the period? We shall consider the significance of the periods recurrent concern with the possibility of false sensibility, and look at developing critiques of sensibility as the century progressed, especially the rationalist views that came to the fore in the 1790s.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will gain a detailed understanding of one of the key literary and cultural developments of the eighteenth century, including its continuing importance into the following century. They will appreciate the ways in terms of both content and style in which literary texts exhibit alterations in attitudes towards sensibility during the period and will be able to relate these changes to the literary and historical context.
• In the process, they will develop an awareness of, and the ability to evaluate critically, relevant contextual and secondary material.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students will develop their analytical skills in two complementary ways: close reading and analysis of individual texts will work alongside the development of a broader understanding of the ways in which a particular literary strand changes over time, and the reasons for these changes.
• They will develop further their critical understanding of key tools and styles of literary analysis and their uses, especially historicism and gender criticism.

Key Skills:

• Students on this course will be expected to exhibit independent thought and judgement in their essays. Critical reasoning, an ability to offer cogent arguments, as well as word-processing, time-management, electronic data access and information organizational skills are all required for this module.

• The module is taught through seminars, which encourage collective responsiveness through interactive discussion as well as the development of independent, individual thought.
• The consultation with the seminar leader before the first essay allows for further, guided exploration of individual ideas and arguments.
• Assessed essays give students the opportunity for focused independent study, permitting them to explore their own ideas and insights as well as demonstrating a requisite knowledge of the subject.
• The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning a student or students an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.

Before the first essay, students will have an individual consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a list of points relevant to the essay and receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

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