Undergraduate Course: The Reign of Terror: Fear and Loathing in Romantic Literature (ENLI10315)
Course Outline
| School |
School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College |
College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type |
Standard |
Availability |
Not available to visiting students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) |
SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Credits |
20 |
| Home subject area |
English Literature |
Other subject area |
None |
| Course website |
http://www.englit.ed.ac.uk/undergraduate/Honours/FourthYear/4thYear_Home.htm |
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| Course description |
This course introduces students to different concepts and discourses of terror in romantic period literature. It concentrates mainly on the relationship between the aesthetic category of the sublime and the political climate of fear created by the Reign of Terror in France in the mid-1790s and intensified by the revolutionary wars in Europe. The course explores how ideas and perceptions of terror fed into romantic literature, and how romantic literature in turn helped to reshape notions of fear. Through reading primary texts and examining contemporary images (such as paintings, engravings, and magazine illustrations) students will develop an enhanced understanding of the connections between the romantic language of terror and other topics, including millenarianism, anti-jacobinism, spectatorship, codes of visuality, obscenity and pornography, prophecy, pantheism, materiality, subjectivity, friendship, domesticity, the Gothic, ?atrocity,= the body, imagination, sexuality, and liminality. The course will begin with an introductory session outlining the main themes and writers on the course, and close with a seminar addressing the relevance of notions of terror and the sublime to (post)modern culture and society. |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 1, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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WebCT enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Seminar | The course is doubling. Students choose which seminar to attend. | 1-11 | | 14:00 - 15:50or 16:10 - 18:00 | | | |
| First Class |
Week 1, Tuesday, 14:00 - 15:50, Zone: Central. All students should attend the first meeting in Room 3.15, 18 Buccleuch Place. |
| Additional information |
1 hour(s) per week for 10 week(s): Autonomous Learning Group at time to be arranged. |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
1. An understanding of the cultural significance of literature 1759-1822;
2. An understanding of the historical origins and constructions of the notions of "terror" and the "sublime";
3. An understanding of the historical and theoretical relationships between images and texts;
4. An enhanced ability to think critically and historically about key cultural and political ideas;
5. An enhanced ability to apply different methods and theories to the interpretation of texts;
6. An enhanced ability to discuss and develop intellectual ideas with others;
7. An enhanced ability to work collaboratively on group projects and presentations;
8. An improved ability to develop and sustain intellectual arguments in essay form. |
Assessment Information
One course essay of c. 2500 words (25%);
and one take-home exam essay of 3,000 words (75%). |
Special Arrangements
| Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser |
Dr Tim Milnes
Tel: (0131 6)50 3615
Email: tim.milnes@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Mrs Anne Mason
Tel: (0131 6)50 3618
Email: Anne.Mason@ed.ac.uk |
|
copyright 2010 The University of Edinburgh -
1 September 2010 6:01 am
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