A substantial essay that critically demonstrates the fertility (or lack thereof) of a particular theoretical approach in the treatment of a literary/ narrative text in approximately 4000 words.

This module will choose as its content a series of literary texts and philosophical approaches to literary texts. The choice will be guided by genre: e.g. tragedy. So, for example, the programme could be:

Sophocles Oedipus Rex.
Aristotle Poetics
Shakespeare Macbeth
Nietzsche The Birth and Death of Tragedy.

For each series of literary texts, the module will contextualise in terms of genre, obvious social/ political or religious themes, and so forth. It will then seek to investigate literary texts as exhibiting a definite form of cognition. For the philosophical texts, the module will critically examine them as possible models for thinking the possibilities of literary or narrative cognition

Aristotle, Poetics. Trans., R. Janko. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991)
Burnham. 'Macbeth, Politics and Time' in Exiles, (Ashgate, 2002).
Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy our of the Spirit of Music. (Penguin: 2000)
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Vol. 1 Trans. Blamey and Pellauer. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.)
Shakespeare, King Lear. (Penguin: 1993)
Shakespeare, Macbeth. (Penguin, 1995).
Sophocles, Three Theban Plays. Trans. Fagles. (Penguin, 1984)

Contact time will be divided into lectures and seminars. The lectures will be responsible for contextualising themes, describing models and exhibiting good analytical practice. The seminars will be for clarification, and for students to pursue and practice analysis.

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