This module is discontinued in the selected year. The information shown below is for the academic year that the module was last running in, prior to the year selected.

2015/16 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

ENGL3287 Thomas Hardy's World

20 creditsClass Size: 20

School of English

Module manager: Professor Francis O'Gorman
Email: f.j.o'gorman@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2015/16

This module is mutually exclusive with

ENGL3305

Thomas Hardy's World

Module replaces

ENGL3305

This module is not approved as a discovery module

Objectives

On completion of this module, students should be in possession of an excellent understanding of a major late Victorian writer. They should be able to think sensitively and in an informed way about Hardy’s fiction and poetry, and be attentive to major literary questions such as the notion of realism, the place of melodrama in the late Victorian imagination, the ethics and uses of tragedy, and questions of theology, class, and gender as they are refracted in Hardy’s writing. Students will have developed confidence in handling sophisticated ideas about sophisticated late nineteenth-century writing, and be able to express themselves lucidly and with knowledge about some of the ongoing legacy of this major author.

Learning outcomes
Students will have developed:
- the ability to use written and oral communication effectively;
- the capacity to analyse and critically examine diverse forms of discourse;
- the ability to manage quantities of complex information in a structured and systematic way;
- the capacity for independent thought and judgement;
- critical reasoning;
- research skills, including the retrieval of information, the organisation of material and the evaluation of its importance;
- IT skills;
- efficient time management and organisation skills;
- the ability to learn independently.

Skills outcomes
- Skills for effective communication, oral and written.
- Capacity to analyse and critically examine diverse forms of discourse.
- Ability to acquire quantities of complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way.
- Capacity for independent thought and judgement.
- Critical reasoning.
- Research skills, including information retrieval skills, the organisation of material, and the evaluation of its importance.
- IT skills.
- Time management and organisational skills.
- Independent learning.

Syllabus

In the nineteenth-century marketplace for literature, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), unable to make a living from poetry, found a reputation with the more sellable form of the novel, almost accidentally becoming in turn one of the period’s most widely discussed, and now widely read, writers of fiction. His fictional mode – a bracing compound of melodrama, sensation fiction, and realism – flitted through the comic towards the tragedy of ordinary, provincial life in which he made his name. At the end of the 1890s, he returned permanently to poetry, publishing a body of work of exceptional power, formal innovations, and influence. This module provides an opportunity to think carefully about Thomas Hardy’s achievement in the three major genres of his work: short fiction, the novel and, of course, poetry. It mixes well-known novels with a ‘minor’ one (Two on a Tower is actually an extraordinary narrative about human tragedy played out against the stars), and provides an occasion to think about poetry – moving, self-conscious, demotic – written in the first half of Hardy’s career but not published until 1898, as well as the complicated, guilt poetry written on the death of Emma, his first wife.
Probing the ethics of narrative and hardy’s role in defining what we understand to be modern experience, we will look at questions of sincerity, parody, imitation, and wit. We will, finally, examine two twentieth-century writers who respond engagingly to Hardy: Somerset Maugham’s wittily critical Cakes and Ale was read in its one day as an account of Hardy and his second wife, while Philip Larkin’s poetry extensively contemplates Hardy’s legacy.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Meetings	5	1.00	5.00
Seminar	10	1.00	10.00
Private study hours			185.00
Total Contact hours			15.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Private study

Teaching will be through weekly seminars (10x 1 hour) plus up to 5 additional hours which can take the form of one-to-one discussions and consultations, the return of unassessed/assessed essays and feedback.

Private Study: Reading, preparation for seminars, essay writing.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

- Contribution to seminars.
- Unassessed essay.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	4,000 words	100.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

This module will be assessed by one essay of 4000 words (including quotations and footnotes). One unassessed essay of 1700 words is required (submitted during Week 7). This does not form part of the assessment for this module, but is a requirement and MUST be submitted. Students who fail to submit the unassessed essay will be awarded a maximum mark of 40 for the module (a bare Pass).

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 22/04/2015

Disclaimer

Browse Other Catalogues

• Undergraduate module catalogue
• Taught Postgraduate module catalogue
• Undergraduate programme catalogue
• Taught Postgraduate programme catalogue

Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team.PROD