THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2024/2025

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Undergraduate Course: Romanticism: Themes, Genres and Contexts (ENLI10373)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course provides students with a broad, varied and yet detailed exploration of British Romantic literature by examining a number of its distinctive genres and asking how they addressed related themes and contexts.
Course description In particular, it will examine the way in which formal innovation was a response to a series of historical upheavals, including the French Revolution (1789-94), the two decades of war that it initiated (1793-1815), and the socially and politically volatile peace that followed.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: ( Literary Studies 1A (ENLI08020) OR Literary Studies 1B (ENLI08021) AND Literary Studies 2A: English Literature in the World, 1380-1788 (ENLI08024) AND Literary Studies 2B: English Literature in the World, post-1789 (ENLI08025)) OR ( English Literature 1 (ENLI08001) OR Scottish Literature 1 (ENLI08016) AND English Literature 2 (ENLI08003) OR Scottish Literature 2 (ENLI08004))
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesA MINIMUM of 4 college/university level literature courses at grade B or above (should include no more than one introductory level literature course). Related courses such as civilisation or other interdisciplinary classes, Freshman Year Seminars or composition/creative writing classes/workshops are not considered for admission to this course. Applicants should also note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission. In making admissions decisions preference will be given to students who achieve above the minimum requirement with the typical visiting student admitted to this course having 4 literature classes at grade A.

** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course **
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  60
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Other Study Hours 10, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 166 )
Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) one hour per week Autonomous Learning Group
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) 2000 word coursework essay (30%) submitted mid-semester;
plus 3000 word final essay submitted during exam period (70%).
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate knowledge of and critical engagement with some of the central topics and themes in Romantic literature
  2. By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the relationships between these themes and the history, philosophy and culture of the Romantic period
  3. By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate knowledge of contemporary debates and concepts in in modern Romantic criticism and scholarship
  4. By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate the ability to deploy a variety of methodological approaches to the study of romantic literature
  5. By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate the ability to reflect constructively on the development of their own learning and research practice
Reading List
Primary Reading

Revolution in Europe
Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790);
Thomas Paine, from Rights of Man (1791);
Mary Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792);
Helen Maria Williams, Letters Written in France in the Summer of 1790 (1790-6).

Empire and Revolution
Excerpts from Olaudah Equiano,
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789); and Toussaint L'Ouverture, The Haitian Revolution;
William Wordsworth, To Toussaint L'Ouverture (1803);
Anna Barbauld, Epistle to Wilberforce (1792);

Blank-verse Autobiography Charlotte Smith, The Emigrants (1793);
William Wordsworth, from The Prelude (1805).

The Modern Ballad
S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1798);
William Wordsworth, The Thorn (1798);
Walter Scott, ballads from The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3);
William Taylor, The Lass of Fair Wone (1796);
David Herd, selection from Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1776).

The Ode William Wordsworth, Ode (1807);
S.T. Coleridge, Dejection: An Ode (1817);
P.B. Shelley, Mont Blanc (1817);
John Keats, To Autumn (1820).

The Domestic Novel
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811).
The Historical Novel Walter Scott, Rob Roy (1817).
Medievalism
John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819) and 'The Eve of St. Agnes' (1820).

Romantic Hellenism
Phillis Wheatley, 'An hymn to the morning', 'An hymn to the evening', 'Niobe in Distress' 'To Maecenas', 'On being brought from Africa to America' (1773);
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812), Canto 2.

The Gothic James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).


Set Texts

Most of the poetry studied on the course will be found in Duncan Wu, editor, Romanticism: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2012) which can be accessed online though the university library catalogue.

In addition, students will need to purchase the three novels on the course:

Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility. Edited by Ros Ballaster, Penguin Classics, 2003.

James Hogg. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Edited by Ian Duncan, Oxford World's Classics, 2010.

Walter Scott. Rob Roy. Edited by Ian Duncan, Oxford World¿s Classics, 2008.

All other primary texts will be supplied on Learn.

Additional Information
Course URL http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/current/honours
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Additional Class Delivery Information one Seminar: 2 hours per week; plus attendance at Autonomous Learning Group for one hour each week - time to be arranged
KeywordsRomanticism,revolution,the ballad,terror,the sublime,gothic,the ode,history,the east,confes
Contacts
Course organiserProf Penny Fielding
Tel: (0131 6)50 3609
Email: Penny.Fielding@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Anne Budo
Tel: (0131 6)50 4161
Email: a.budo@ed.ac.uk
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