BA English Literature and Spanish

This course aims to introduce students to key concepts and techniques in the critical reading of literature.  It examines works in three major categories: prose, poetry, and drama.  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.  

' 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 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 Canvas.

2 hours of lecture and 1 hour of seminar  

Lecture slides, handouts, and other teaching materials will be posted after the relevant lecture.  

• 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 

• Formulate arguments on the basis of textual evidence 

• Use appropriate scholarly terms and methods of presentation 

• · Give critical readings of texts in different genres, including fiction, poetry, drama

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 

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.

For 2025–26, the first three weeks of lectures and seminars will focus on some poems, which will be available via a course handbook that you can pick up outside Dr Metcalf’s office (Samuel Alexander Building S1.36) in Welcome Week. 
For further weeks you should borrow from the library or buy copies of:
-    Lesley Nneka Arimah, What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky (Tinder Press, 2018)
-    Melissa Harrison, All Among the Barley (Bloomsbury, 2018)
-    William Shakespeare, The Tempest, eds Lauren Working, Rory Loughnane, and Emma Smith (Oxford University Press, 2024)
-    Samuel Beckett, Endgame (Faber, 2009)

In addition, some of this course’s seminar exercises and support for assessment will use Gerald Graff’s and Cathy Birkenstein’s They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (sixth edn., 2024), available through the library’s core books. You can draw on this book’s practical advice for reading, research, and writing at university.