Postgraduate Course: The Reign of Terror: Fear and Loathing in Romantic Literature (ENLI11126)
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 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits |
20 |
| Home subject area |
English Literature |
Other subject area |
None |
| Course website |
None |
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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. |
Entry Requirements
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites |
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| Prohibited Combinations |
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Other requirements |
None
|
| Additional Costs |
Essential course texts. |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 1, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
WebCT enabled: No |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| No Classes have been defined for this Course |
| First Class |
First class information not currently available |
| Additional information |
1 hour(s) per week for 10 week(s). |
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 4,000 word essay to be submitted as specified in the programme handbook or by the supervisor |
Special Arrangements
| Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser |
Dr Tim Milnes
Tel: (0131 6)50 3615
Email: tim.milnes@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Ms June Haigh
Tel: (0131 6)50 3612
Email: j.haigh@ed.ac.uk |
|
copyright 2010 The University of Edinburgh -
1 September 2010 6:02 am
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