Module Descriptors
THE POETRY OF SUBVERSION
ENGL50363
Key Facts
Faculty of Arts and Creative Technologies
Level 5
15 credits
Contact
Leader: Barry Taylor
Email: B.P.Taylor@staffs.ac.uk
Hours of Study
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities: 24
Independent Study Hours: 126
Total Learning Hours: 150
Assessment
- COURSEWORK weighted at 100%
Module Details
Module Indicative Content
This module is designed to provide you with an insight into the origins and nature of the English Romantic movement, its social, political and historical context. It will enable you to explore the work of the first-generation English Romantic poets and their central social, political and philosophical preoccupations, and their immediate relevance to the contemporary, post-modern (and post-Romantic) world.
The module will include some consideration of the socio-political climate of the 1790s in Britain, and the role of the poet in times of revolutionary ferment and repressive government. The module will consider the poets' responses to their times and the way these responses are related to the central concept of imagination as a source of inspiration, poetic and political. The module will conclude with a major poem from one of the second generation Romantics (e.g. Byron or Shelley), to provide some textual, contextual and ideological development into the nineteenth century.
Examples of texts:
Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Coleridge - The Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan;
Frost at Midnight; Dejection: An Ode
Wordsworth - Lyrical Ballads
The Prelude (Extracts)
Ode: On the Intimations of Immortality
Byron - The Vision of Judgement
Shelley - The Mask of Anarchy
The module will include some consideration of the socio-political climate of the 1790s in Britain, and the role of the poet in times of revolutionary ferment and repressive government. The module will consider the poets' responses to their times and the way these responses are related to the central concept of imagination as a source of inspiration, poetic and political. The module will conclude with a major poem from one of the second generation Romantics (e.g. Byron or Shelley), to provide some textual, contextual and ideological development into the nineteenth century.
Examples of texts:
Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Coleridge - The Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan;
Frost at Midnight; Dejection: An Ode
Wordsworth - Lyrical Ballads
The Prelude (Extracts)
Ode: On the Intimations of Immortality
Byron - The Vision of Judgement
Shelley - The Mask of Anarchy
Module Additional Assessment Details
Two pieces; one, weighted 30%, will assess learning outcomes 1 and 2; and the second, weighted 70%, will assess all 4 learning outcomes
Module Learning Strategies
A series of participatory lectures and workshops will provide students with essential contextual information and offer ideas for seminar discussion. There will be an accompanying series of seminars closely associated with the lecture/workshop programme; this will be partly tutor-led, partly student-led, closely related to the texts selected from the module.
Module Texts
Thompson, E. P. The Making Of The English Working Class, 1963 (Part 1, 'The Liberty Tree')
Curran, S. The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, 1993
Day, A. Romanticism 1996
Watson, J.R. English Poetry of the Romantic Period 1992
Curran, S. The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, 1993
Day, A. Romanticism 1996
Watson, J.R. English Poetry of the Romantic Period 1992
Module Resources
Library and Internet
Video and play-back equipment
Video and play-back equipment