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 Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course introduces students to different concepts and discourses of terror in romantic period literature. It concentrates mainly on the relationship between aesthetic theories 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. |
| Course description |
Through reading primary texts, 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, prophecy, pantheism, materiality, subjectivity, friendship, domesticity, the Gothic, 'atrocity,' the body, imagination, gender, 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.
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Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 15 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
194 )
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| Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) |
plus attendance at Autonomous Learning Group for one hour per week
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One coursework essay of c. 2000 words (30%);
and one take-home final essay of c. 3000 words (70%). |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- An understanding of the cultural significance of literature 1759-1822;
- An enhanced ability to apply different methods and theories to the interpretation of texts;
- An enhanced ability to discuss and develop intellectual ideas with others;
- An enhanced ability to work collaboratively on group projects and presentations;
- An improved ability to develop and sustain intellectual arguments in essay form.
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Reading List
The Sublime Spectacle: Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790, excerpts) and Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1759)
Apocalypse Now: Blake, The visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793) and America: A Prophecy (1793)
Perils of Consciousness: Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805, excerpts)
Fears in Solitude: Coleridge, 'Frost at Midnight'; 'France: An Ode'; 'Fears in Solitude' (1798); Lamb, 'Witches, and Other Night Fears' (1821)
Gothic Terror: Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
The Revolting Body: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
The Material Sublime: Percy Shelley, 'Ode to The West Wind'; 'Ozymandais'; 'England in 1819'; 'The Triumph of Life' (1822)
Gothic Horror: Lewis, The Monk (1795)
The Postmodern Sublime: Lyotard, 'Postscript to Terror and the Sublime' (1985); Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism (2002) (excerpts); Slavoj 'i'ek, In Defense of Lost Causes (2008) (excerpts)
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Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Tim Milnes
Tel: (0131 6)50 3615
Email: tim.milnes@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Lina Gordyshevskaya
Tel:
Email: pgordysh@ed.ac.uk |
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