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

Undergraduate Course: Place and Space in Early Modern Literature (ENLI10372)

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 explores the many ways in which writers in the early modern period imagined, narrated and created place. Reading across fiction, drama and poetry, it addresses a series of linked questions. How does literature articulate the relationship between people and their environment? How does it trace connections between landscape and personal, family and national histories? What does it make of the contrast between settlement and mobility? To what ends does it imagine impossible or futuristic places? In addressing these questions, the course will examine differing literary perspectives on place, as well as their relationship to other forms of landscape representation such as cartography and painting. It will also draw on relevant historical context and theories of place and space to help focus students' attention on the multitude of ways in which literature works topopoetically - as the writing of place, space and mobility.
Course description This course explores the many ways in which writers in the early modern period imagined, narrated and created place. Reading across fiction, drama and poetry, it addresses a series of linked questions. How does literature articulate the relationship between people and their environment? How does it trace connections between landscape and personal, family and national histories? What does it make of the contrast between settlement and mobility? To what ends does it imagine impossible or futuristic places? In addressing these questions, the course will examine differing literary perspectives on place, as well as their relationship to other forms of landscape representation such as cartography and painting. It will also draw on relevant historical context and theories of place and space to help focus students' attention on the multitude of ways in which literature works topopoetically - as the writing of place, space and mobility.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: ( Literary Studies 1A (ENLI08020) AND Literary Studies 1B (ENLI08021) OR English Literature 1 (ENLI08001) AND Scottish Literature 1 (ENLI08016)) 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 Scottish Literature 2A (ENLI08022) AND Scottish Literature 2B (ENLI08023) OR English Literature 2 (ENLI08003) AND 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 cross disciplinary, "Freshman Seminars", civilisation or creative writing classes 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 four or more 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
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. In their work for this course, students will develop their knowledge of the variety and kinds of early modern topopoetic writing
  2. In their work for this course, students will demonstrate a developing understanding of the generic range, formal properties and characteristics of early modern topopoetic literature
  3. In their work for this course, students will analyse topopoetic writing in the context of changing social and theatrical conditions
  4. In their work for this course, students will analyse topopoetic literature in the light of theories of, and critical reflections on, space, place and mobility
  5. By the end of the course students will be able to demonstrate the ability to reflect constructively on the development of their own learning and research practice
Reading List
Compulsory

Robert Cumming, ed. Seventeenth Century Poetry: an Annotated Anthology (Blackwell)
Ben Jonson, The New Inn (Revels)
Richard Brome, A Jovial Crew (Arden)
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin)

Recommended

Steven Zwicker, The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740 (CUP)
Gregory Claeys, The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature (CUP)
Julie Sanders, The Cultural Geography of Early Modern Drama (CUP)
Susan Bennett, ed., Performing Environments (Palgrave)
Tim Fitzpatrick, Playwright, Space and Place in Early Modern Performance (Ashgate)
Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (OUP)
James Turner, The Politics of Landscape (Blackwell)
Patricia Fumerton, Unsettled (U Chicago Press)
Andrew McRae, Literature and Domestic Travel in Early Modern England (CUP)
Tim Cresswell, Place: a Short Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell)
Jon Anderson, Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces (Routledge)
Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism (OUP)
Andrew Gordon and Bernhard Klein, ed., Literature, Mapping and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain (CUP)
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 - at time to be arranged
KeywordsPlace,Space,Mobility,Early modern literature,Renaissance,Restoration,English,Topopoetics
Contacts
Course organiserProf James Loxley
Tel: (0131 6)50 3610
Email: James.Loxley@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMs Monique Brough
Tel: (0131 6)50 3618
Email: Monique.Brough@ed.ac.uk
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