Delivered at:: School of Foreign Languages

Course type:: Elective course

When:: 1 year, 3, 4 module

Instructor

Volkonskaya, Maria A.

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Abstract

Literature of Great Britain is a rigorous two-module course designed for the undergraduate students who are interested in the development of British literature from its beginnings to the present in relation to its historical, linguistic, and cultural contexts. To fulfill the requirements of the course students need to have a good command of written and spoken English (required CEFR language proficiency level is B2). Through a wide range of selected readings in prose, poetry, and drama from the Old English period to the 21st century, this course introduces students to British literature and examines its development in the context of stylistic, cultural, historical, and linguistic changes and influences. It increases one’s understanding of literary conventions, enhances the enjoyment of various forms of literature, and encourages personal exploration and interpretation of the diversity of human experience, which British literature affords. Students will critically read and evaluate a number of assigned Key Texts (significant examples of the given period representing a diversity of British writers) as well as engage in independent reading outside of class. They will both develop skills of literary analysis and acquire knowledge of British cultural history. The course combines activities of a traditional (quizzes, essays, discussions etc.) and a nontraditional (debates, presentations, journal writing etc.) nature. Designed to emphasize independent thought, it also envisages various research projects conducted individually or in small groups on a wide range of topics related to its subject matter.

Learning Objectives

To broaden one’s knowledge about the body of written works produced in the English language by the inhabitants of the British Isles from the 7th century to the present day, putting it in the larger context of the thematic concerns of the writers, as well as the specific historical events and cultural influences to which these writers responded.
To engage with, close read, reflect upon, and respond to a range of assigned Key Texts in the three main forms (prose, poetry, and drama), noticing such features as tropes and figures of speech, structural elements, oppositions and correspondences, themes, motifs, symbols, allusions, and cultural or historical references, as well as to discuss the reception and present-day relevance of these texts.
To hone one’s Critical Reading, Critical Thinking, and Critical Writing skills necessary for advancing clear and compelling arguments in the interpretation of a text, which in its turn will enable students to further apply the knowledge gained in professional, scholarly, and interpersonal communication in the multicultural world of today.

Expected Learning Outcomes

To know key terms and personalities related to Old English literature; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).
To know key terms and personalities related to Middle English literature; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).
To know key terms and personalities related to English poetry and drama in the 16th century; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).
To know key terms and personalities related to British literature in the 17th century; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).
To know key terms and personalities related to British literature of the Enlightenment; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).
To know key terms and personalities related to British Romanticism; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).
To know key terms and personalities related to Victorian literature; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).
To know key terms and personalities related to British literature at the turn of the 20th century; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).
To know key terms and personalities related to British literature from the 1930s onwards; to read critically, comprehend, and produce clear, informed, independent opinions and judgements on the assigned Key Text(s).

Course Contents

Old English literature
Course introduction. The beginnings of British literature. Old English alliterative verse. The theory of oral-formulaic composition. Epic and lyric poems. Christianity and literacy. Medieval authorship. Old English prose. Key Text: "Beowulf" (excerpts).
Middle English literature
Anglo-Norman literature. Romance. Middle English literature in the 14th and 15th centuries. The development of lyric, political, and religious poems. The “Alliterative Revival.” Geoffrey Chaucer. William Caxton and the art of printing. Key Text: Geoffrey Chaucer’s "Canterbury Tales" (excerpts).
English poetry and drama in the 16th century
Renaissance humanism and anthropocentrism. Thomas More’s Utopia. The Reformation. The rise of linguistic self-confidence. The Elizabethan Age. Elizabethan poets. The arrival of the sonnet. The golden age of English drama. Public theaters and playing companies. Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The divisions of Shakespeare’s plays. Key Texts: William Shakespeare's "Sonnets" (selected sonnets); "King Lear"; selected poems (Reading Journal 1).
British literature in the 17th century
The Jacobean Age. The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible. The Metaphysical Poets. The works of John Donne. The interaction of inherited ideas and new scientific knowledge. The revolutionary era and the Restoration. Baroque and Classical tendencies. John Milton. Key Texts: John Donne’s poetry (selected poems) OR John Milton’s "Paradise Lost" (excerpts).
The Enlightenment (Neoclassical period)
The beginning of the Enlightenment. The philosophical background of the epoch: the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The Augustan Age. Political stability and commercial vigour. The advance of middle class literature and periodicals. Scientific discoveries and explorations. Empiricism. The plurality of worlds. Jonathan Swift’s "Gulliver’s Travels." The Age of Sensibility. The rise of the novel. Key Text: Daniel Defoe’s "Robinson Crusoe."
Romanticism and the major Romantic poets
The transition towards the Romantic period. The political and economic context. The medieval revival and the interest in folklore. The works of William Blake, Robert Burns, and Walter Scott. The rise of Romantic poetry. The shift to individualism. The Lake school. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s "Lyrical Ballads." The works of the later Romantics: John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon Byron. Key Texts: selected poems (Reading Journal 2).
The Victorian period
Industrialization and economic prosperity. The heyday of the British Empire. The disputes about religion and evolution. The change in the reading public. The golden age of the novel. The realistic novel. Victorian novelists and their literary concerns. The Brontë sisters. Victorian poetry: experimenting with the dramatic monologue. The Pre-Raphaelites. Key Text: Charles Dickens’s "Great Expectations."
British literature at the turn of the 20th century
The decay of Victorian values. The key anxieties of the fin de siècle. Aestheticism and decadence. The beginning of the modernist movement in literature. James Joyce. World War I in British poetry: the Trench Poets. The disillusionment of the “Lost Generation.” T.S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land." Eliot as an American-British poet. Key Texts: Virginia Woolf’s "Mrs. Dalloway"; selected poems (Reading Journal 3, optional).
British literature from the 1930s onwards
The politicization of literature. The reaction against modernism. The red decade. The post-World War II changes. The decline of the British Empire and decolonization. The Angry Young Men. The writers from Britain’s former colonies. The late-century mix of voices and styles. Postmodernism. Key Texts: George Orwell’s "Nineteen Eighty-Four"; Julian Barnes’s "England, England" OR Kazuo Ishiguro’s "Buried Giant"; individual home reading assignments.

Assessment Elements

Attendance and participation
Active participation in group discussions and in-class assignments is required at every seminar. Students should inform their instructor about their excused absences before the class (not after) by email, and provide the doctor’s notes and other documents about them. An excused absence is an absence due to a number of accepted reasons such as a medical or personal issue beyond one’s control, participation in a significant extracurricular university event, conference etc. If the absence is excused, the grade for seminar participation will not be reduced. Students will have an opportunity to make up any quizzes missed for full credit on a date agreed upon by the student and the instructor. However, even if a student is absent, they are still responsible for major written home assignments; because they will have at least a week’s lead time, the due date for these remains the same regardless of one’s absence.
Ongoing quizzes
Before some of the seminars, LMS quizzes will evaluate students’ understanding of the required Key Texts. It is up to the instructor to decide whether to give a quiz or not; students will not be warned about it in advance, so they should do their reading beforehand.
Written home assignments
There will be several written home assignments in the format of journal writing (analyzing poems of a given period). The assignments should be typed and follow basic academic style conventions and formatting rules. Instructions will be given per assignment.
Projects, presentations, and other activities
Several projects, presentations, and other activities will be given throughout the course as a way for students to demonstrate understanding and mastery in their own unique way.
Written examination
The written examination consists of a literary analysis essay (2.5–3 A4 pages long), the purpose of which is to carefully examine an aspect of a Key Text discussed in the course and to present an argument / claim about it. The essay should be uploaded as a project via LMS before the deadline. The list of topics and guidelines will be sent via email two weeks before the deadline. Each student taking the exam must choose a topic from the list provided and write their essay during hours of self-guided work. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. For each plagiarized sentence, the student loses one point (for example, 8 → 7). If there are more than five plagiarized sentences in one’s work, the grade for the essay is a zero.

Interim Assessment

Interim assessment (4 module)
0.25 * Attendance and participation + 0.15 * Ongoing quizzes + 0.2 * Projects, presentations, and other activities + 0.25 * Written examination + 0.15 * Written home assignments

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Cavanagh, D., Gillis, A., & Keown, M. (2014). The Edinburgh Introduction to Studying English Literature: Vol. 2nd ed. Edinburgh University Press.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Lambdin, L. C., & Lambdin, R. T. (2002). A Companion to Old and Middle English Literature. Greenwood Publishing Group.
Patrick Parrinder. (2006). Nation and Novel : The English Novel From Its Origins to the Present Day. OUP Oxford.
Paula R. Backscheider, & Catherine Ingrassia. (2005). A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century English Novel and Culture. Wiley-Blackwell.
The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature. (2003). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/chol9780521631563

Bachelor’s Programme 'Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication'

Literature of Great Britain