Aims and Fit of Module

This module builds on the techniques of lit-erary study encountered in ENG105, ENG106, and ENG1XX, and provides the opportunity to study English literature of ‘the Enlightenment’, between around 1680 and 1789. The module will enable learners to develop advanced critical skills and detailed knowledge of a formative period for European and English art, culture and socie-ty. The syllabus is flexible, but should reflect the period’s innovations and reinventions, covering such genres as epic and mock-epic poems, plays, novels, satires, essays, prose tracts, literary biographies, etc. Through studying and discussing these texts, learners will develop advanced skills in critical think-ing, persuasive writing, and genre analysis.

Overall the module aims to:

•	Broaden and deepen knowledge of a key literary-historical period, in part through study of texts which are common reference points in English-speaking culture and socie-ty;

•	Provide a range of theoretical, for-mal, and thematic frameworks for thinking about and interpreting these texts 

•	allow students to consider relation-ships between texts and contexts, and to de-velop a critical awareness of canon-formation

•	encourage students to develop their own responses to texts, informed by close reading and knowledge of key critical per-spectives

Texts will be studied in the Norton Antholo-gy, supplemented with editions of individual works where appropriate. Key critical read-ings will be considered alongside and in dia-logue with the literary texts.

Learning outcomes

A. make independent critical analyses of literary texts from the period of ‘the Enlightenment’ (c.1680-1789)

B. demonstrate informed awareness of the various ways in which texts can be analysed and interpreted, in relation to cultural and historical content, using appropriate methodologies, vocabularies, and sources 

C. structure independent, coherent, critically informed, and theoretically reflective essays, dealing with texts of various lengths and genres, or with a range of products from a writer or group of writers

Method of teaching and learning

The teaching sessions divide into Lectures and Seminars. 


Lectures offer content on theory and contexts, and provide examples of critical readings of literary texts.  


Seminars require students to present and interrogate ideas, to develop critical positions in detail, and to explore the primary and secondary/critical readings in depth.