2017/18 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

ENGL5835M The Literature of Crisis: Politics and Gender in 1790s Britain

30 creditsClass Size: 10

Module manager: Dr Richard de Ritter
Email: R.DeRitter@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable

Year running 2017/18

This module is not approved as an Elective

Objectives

This module explores the anxieties – political, social and sexual – of Britain in the 1790s. With the traumatic events taking place in France never far from the literary and popular imagination writers responded in daring and disturbing ways, rethinking the relationship between literature, politics and gender. Some texts explored new ways of living while others anxiously debated what appeared to be shocking change. These differing responses will be explored in detail. Students will be expected to be careful and imaginative readers.

The module consequently examines the relationship between several forms of literature – the novel, poetry and the political treatise – and the political and cultural history of the period. Understanding how literary writing interrogates and debates social change will be a critical skill throughout.

Learning outcomes
Students shall

• Examine the political and cultural changes that occurred in Britain in the wake of the French Revolution.
• Understand how differing modes of writing – the Gothic, for instance, could be mobilised in different ways and for different political purposes.
• Gain an understanding over debates about sexuality and gender identity as they occurred during the eighteenth century.
• Demonstrate an ability to engage critically with current debates in eighteenth-century and Romantic studies around gender, politics, literary form and the relationships between them.

Skills outcomes
Masters (Taught), Postgraduate Diploma & Postgraduate Certificate students will have had the opportunity to acquire the following abilities as defined in the modules specified for the programme:
- the skills necessary to undertake a higher research degree and/or for employment in a higher capacity;
- evaluating their own achievement and that of others;
- self direction and effective decision making;
- independent learning and the ability to work in a way which ensures continuing professional development;
- to engage critically in the development of professional/disciplinary boundaries and norms.

Syllabus

This module explores a range of writing produced within the turbulent decade of the 1790s. It will investigate the political treatises of the period, exploring how cultural crisis was persistently refracted through the language of gender, from Edmund Burke’s lament that the French Revolution signalled the end of ‘the age of chivalry’, to Mary Wollstonecraft’s desire to effect ‘a revolution in female manners’. It will also focus on a selection of the decade’s innovative fiction, exploring how it combines investigations of individual psychology with broader cultural critique. Finally, the module will engage with poetry of the period (by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Smith and Anna Letitia Barbauld), which ranges from politically urgent polemics to reflective meditations upon retirement and domesticity. While the 1790s brought the eighteenth century to a traumatic close, this module will offer the chance to explore the ways in which its exciting and unpredictable literature mapped out new ways of thinking about the relationship between gender, politics and the act of writing itself.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Seminar	10	2.00	20.00
Private study hours			280.00
Total Contact hours			20.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			300.00

Private study

Reading, seminar preparation, essay research: 280 hours.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Each student will present a short unassessed conference paper to the rest of the group.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	1 x 5,000 word essay	100.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

ESS

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 26/04/2017

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