- UCAS course code
- Q320
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Course unit details:
Reading Literature
Unit code | ENGL10021 |
---|---|
Credit rating | 20 |
Unit level | Level 1 |
Teaching period(s) | Semester 1 |
Available as a free choice unit? | No |
Overview
This course aims to introduce students to key concepts and techniques in the critical reading of literature. It examines works in four major categories: prose, poetry, drama, and popular culture. Within each category, lecturers identify and demonstrate some of the methods involved in the practice of close reading or rhetorical analysis. Lectures model the kinds of “reading” that students are expected to use in writing essays, including:
- reading with an awareness of genre
- reading in relation to a text’s authorship, reception, or cultural contexts
- reading with an attention to formal features like point of view, word choice, sentence-length, verse form, poetic devices, and poetic rhythm and meter
- reading for the relationship between a work’s content and its form.
Aims
' To introduce students to reading skills in the main genres in contemporary English studies.
- To familiarize students with a range of important terms and tools (including the ability to scan lines of verse) in the critical reading of prose, poetry, drama, and culture.
- To develop students' ability to use critical reading in order to construct an argument.
- To introduce students to the theoretical issues around the notion of culture, and to the reading skills needed when critically evaluating popular culture.
- To develop skills of written and oral expression.
- To develop students' ability to work effectively as a group and in online discussion groups.
- To develop students' IT skills through Blackboard.
Syllabus
After the introductory lecture, the course is divided into four units, each of which is focused on reading a particular literary form. Readings vary year on year, but a typical year might include: Unit 1: Reading Poetry (poems including sonnets and odes by a wide range of poets, in a course handbook); Unit 2: Reading Prose (fiction and non-fiction by novelists and essayists from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries); Unit 3: Reading Drama (plays by Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett);
Teaching and learning methods
2 hours of lecture and 1 hour of seminar
Lecture slides, handouts, and other teaching materials will be posted on blackboard after the relevant lecture.
Knowledge and understanding
Identify works in a variety of different forms
Identify and explicate some of the methods used by literary or cultural critics to examine formal issues and to link a work’s form with its content
Intellectual skills
Formulate arguments on the basis of textual evidence
Use appropriate scholarly terms and methods of presentation
Practical skills
- · Give critical readings of texts in different genres, including poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and drama
Transferable skills and personal qualities
Communicate appropriately in online and seminar discussions
Express their arguments in writing that reaches a Level 1 standard
Read texts critically and with attention to rhetorical detail
Speak and debate issues clearly
Navigate and utilize the resources available on Blackboard
Assessment methods
Method | Weight |
---|---|
Written assignment (inc essay) | 60% |
Set exercise | 40% |
Feedback methods
Feedback method | Formative or Summative |
Feedback on seminar work | Formative |
Written feedback on all essays | Summative |
Meeting for feedback prior to submission of essay | Formative |
A meeting, after the submission of the essay, to discuss summative feedback and provide formative feedback for future assignments | Summative and formative |
Recommended reading
You are also strongly encouraged to purchase the following reference books, both of which you will need throughout your studies here at Manchester.
1. A reputable academic grammar and style guide, such as The Penguin Writer’s Manual (Penguin, 2002), ISBN 978-0140514896.
2. A dictionary of literary terms, such as The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (Penguin, 1999), ISBN 978-0140513639 OR The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford University Press, 2008), ISBN 978-0199208272.
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
---|---|
Lectures | 22 |
Seminars | 11 |
Independent study hours | |
---|---|
Independent study | 167 |
Teaching staff
Staff member | Role |
---|---|
James Metcalf | Unit coordinator |