ENG-20090 - Module Specification
School of Humanities
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2024/25

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

N/A

Barred Combinations

N/A

Description for 2024/25

The Romantic period is one of the most creatively fertile and historically compelling in the history of English literature. There were revolutions in France and America. Old certainties ¿ religious and political ¿ were challenged by new ideas about the rights of men and women. Educational and political reform was on the agenda in parliament and the industrial revolution was in full swing. The period was alive with debates which would bring about the end of the slave trade and reform the British political system.
There was also a revolution in the way writers understood the changing world around them. New significance was placed on qualities such as sensibility, the feeling subject, and the synthesising power of the imagination.
This module will introduce you to these themes in the work of writers and thinkers such as William Blake, Anna Barbauld, the Wordsworths, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Lord Byron, Olaudah Equiano, Percy Shelley, Charlotte Smith, and John Keats.

To equip students with knowledge of the work of a range of authors from the Romantic Period.
To offer students an understanding of key historical, political and philosophical contexts in relation to the literature of this period.
To offer students insight into some of the theoretical and critical traditions that have shaped our understanding of Romanticism.
To enable students to carry out contextualised close reading analysis of Romantic literature.
To provide students with the opportunity to draw comparisons between the work of different Romantic authors and to construct an argument based around these comparisons.

Intended Learning Outcomes

identify the distinctive formal and thematic features of a variety of Romantic literature: 1,2
engage in contextualised close textual analysis of a variety of Romantic literary forms and genres: 1,2
demonstrate the ability to compare and contrast literature by different authors writing during the Romantic Period: 2
evaluate theoretical and critical constructions and receptions of Romanticism: 1,2
demonstrate knowledge of the historical, philosophical and psychological contexts of the Romantic period: 1,2
develop skills in writing for different audiences and in different formats: 1,2

Study hours

lectures/workshops (24 hours)
seminars (12 hours)
seminar preparation and private study (65 hours)
long essay writing and preparation (35 hours)
short paper preparation and writing (14 hours)

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment