Postgraduate Course: Writing and Tyranny at the Court of Henry VIII (ENLI11153)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The course will study the writings of a period when politics and literature were intimately and powerfully connected. The dramatic and bloody events of the reign of Henry VIII are, thanks to frequent television adaptations, films and works of popular history, well known to many of us. But the equally extraordinary literary works produced and performed at and around the royal court in this period are less frequently studied. This course will focus on those works: poems, plays and prose writings, ranging from erotic lyrics to savage satirical attacks on the king and his ministers, from lightly comic plays to fierce polemical dramas. All of these texts are both powerful works in their own right and also contributions to political debates about the nature of royal power, religious truth or personal and sexual morality. And many of the writers we shall encounter, from the staunchly catholic Sir Thomas More to the fiercely protestant reformer John Bale, from the satirist John Skelton to the humourist John Heywood are equally fascinating.
The emphasis will be on gaining an understanding of how these writers and their texts both responded to and contributed to the political culture of the reign of Henry VIII. Reading literary texts alongside a variety of visual images and historical documents, we will explore how poets, dramatists and prose writers used their work to explore the moral issues and social tensions exposed by Henry VIII's rejection of his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, his break with the papacy and establishment of the Royal Supremacy, and the growth of what many perceived to be the king's tyrannical domination of the realm. We will explore how many of the forms and modes of writing that would form the staple repertoire of English literature in the age of Shakespeare were actually forged out of the fierce struggles to promote or resist royal power in the court of King Henry.
*This course is taught jointly with undergraduate students and consequently postgraduate places are limited |
| Course description |
Not entered
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Discuss critically the central features of literary culture at the Court of Henry Vdrama in the pre-playhouse period
- Discuss the cultural background to key Henrician texts View Henrician texts in a sophisticated and informed way, alive to both their literary and their historical significance
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Special Arrangements |
Jointly taught with undergraduate students (ENLI10296)
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| Keywords | WaT |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Greg Walker
Tel:
Email: Greg.Walker@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Kara McCormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk |
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