Doing English - Week 7: Critical Departures

Weds 26th November, 11am, LT2

poster

11.00 Mr Mcfadzean, 'Deconstructive reading'

A brief introduction to Derrida's key concepts, and the difficulties of applying them to literary criticism.

11.30 Ms Dunleavy, 'Introduction to queer theory'

A critical introduction to queer theory. This lecture will also be relevant to anyone interested in learning more about Foucault and poststructuralism.

12.00 Mr Williams, 'Orientalism and postcolonialism'

An introduction to literature and empire, discussing Edward Said and other key theorists.

Doing English: Week 6 - Close Reading and Form

Weds 19th November, LT2, 11am

11.00 - Ms Martin, 'Close reading: Ideas and Ideals'

11.30 - Ms Green, 'Power and the sonnet: The case of Keats and the Elgin Marbles'

This lecture will give a detailed practical example of close reading which will ground more abstract reflection on the "ideas and ideals" of close reading. The poem that I have chosen for this case study is by John Keats, and is called "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles". I chose this poem because on a formal level it invites the closest of readings - its difficulty and its conspicuous formal qualities demand that we read it closely. At the same time, it is very possible to place this poem within a well-defined discursive context - the context of debate over the artistic and ethical status of the Elgin marbles and their removal from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin. As such, like the attempt to unite observations on the macro and the micro scale in the natural sciences, this poem challenges critics to take both a micro and a macro view, and to ask whether those distant and close views unite, disunite, disturb or explain each other. As such, I think the poem makes a great case study for close reading and its place within the practice of "doing English".

By the end of this lecture I hope that, by observing the way in which I manoeuvre between close and contextual readings in this case, you will have gained some ideas about ways in which you might negotiate the relationship between close and contextual reading in your own essays. In addition, this lecture will be useful if you are studying Romanticism for finals paper 6, describing one of the key artistic controversies of the era and directing you to some further reading for exploring this controversy further.

12.00 - Mr Tate, 'Reading poetic form'

This lecture will discuss various definitions of poetic form and will attempt to give some answers to the thorny question of what form actually is and does. Its main focus will be on the critical uses of formal analysis: it will argue that an awareness of a poem’s formal organisation, far from being an optional extra in criticism, offers a direct route to a fuller appreciation of that poem’s meaning and impact. Using examples from a number of well-known nineteenth and twentieth-century poems, this lecture will show how a close reading of the specific elements of form- metre, rhyme, lineation, stanza, and genre- can greatly improve our understanding both of specific poems and of poetry in general.

Doing English: Week 5 - Allusion and Voice

Weds 12th November, LT2, 11am

11.oo - Mr Walker, 'Allusion and the Tempest I: Theory and practice'
11.30 - Mr Roebuck, 'Allusion and the Tempest II: Rewritings'

These two interlinking lectures will look at the concept of allusion, focussing on examples that relate to Shakespeare's The Tempest – one of the core texts for the Mods Introduction to Literary Studies Paper. They will also be of particular interest to students working towards the FHS paper on Shakespeare. Various critical debates around the term will be considered, such as its relation to theories of influence and intertextuality. But the main focus will be on how allusion may be used practically as a critical tool. This will be explored through a wide range of texts that allude to The Tempest, including T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Samuel Beckett’s Endgame.

12.00 - Ms Vanhensbergen, 'Female voice: women writers and the early modern'

12.30 - Mr Blades, 'Dialect and poetry: Heaney and Harrison'

Doing English: Week 4 - Genres

Weds 5th November, LT2, 11am

11.oo - Ms Caughey, 'Medieval masculinities and genre'#

11.30 - Ms Johnson, 'The modernist long poem'

12.00 - Ms Farkas, 'Modernism and the genres of theatre'

12.30 - Ms McHugh, 'The epic and the early Stewarts'

This lecture will introduce Mods students to the Early Stewart kings of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Scotland, and the two epic poems about the Wars of Independence connected with them - John Barbour's "The Brus" and Blind Harry's "The Wallace". We will consider how these poems bear out, as well as depart from, the features of epic poetry and how they anticipate later developments in Scottish poetry.

The lecture will be a useful introduction to fifteenth-century Scottish poetry for those students interested in taking the Scottish Literature Pre-1600 paper in FHS.

Doing English: Week 3 - Authorship

Weds 29th October, LT2, 11am

11.00 - Ms. Robinson, 'Translation, Adaptation, and the Medieval Author'

My lecture will be looking at ways of approaching 'The Medieval Author': what is a Medieval Author and what kinds of things do we mean when we talk about Medieval Authorship? To do this I'll be examining the ways in which Chaucer and Lydgate are figured within the Riverside Chaucer, and bringing in (a small amount of!) theory to look at how we could complicate questions of authorship, and analyse the ways in which we approach Medieval texts.

The lecture will be especially useful for Mods 1 and 3b (Middle English) and FHS Course I paper 3, and Course II.

11.30 - Mr. Salamone, 'Reconstructing the Early Modern Author?'

This lecture will examine concepts of authorship at work in some of the poetry, prose, and drama of the early modern period. Can we say that the notion of the ‘Author’, as we think of it today, existed in the 16th and early 17th century? Are we simplifying the early modern literary system if we forget to acknowledge that there are multiple modes of authorship at play in this period? What does it mean to re-member and memorialise writers long dead? These questions will be explored through a discussion of three main areas: the manuscript circulation of verse, the use of celebrity and authorial personae as marketing tools in Elizabethan prose, and the construction of theatrical authorship.

This lecture will cover material relevant to Mods paper 1, and FHS papers 2 and 4.

Mr Farrell's lecture has been cancelled.

Week 2 - Texts Matter - Materials

Alex da Costa, 'Medieval Manuscripts: Why they Matter'

View the natty video about making paper with Stephen Fry from Alex da Costa's lecture here:



The interactive demonstration of how a medieval manuscript was made is available here.

John McTague, 'The Materiality of Texts'

Click to download the handout (including online resources, a glossary, and some extension work) from John McTague's lecture on the materiality of texts.

Christopher Whalen, 'Genetic Criticism'

Click to download a bibliography or the powerpoint presentation (including facsimilies of proofs and typescripts from James Joyce and T.S. Eliot) from Chris Whalen's lecture on Genetic Criticism.

Doing English: Week 2 - Texts Matter

Doing English: Week 2 - Texts Matter

Weds 22nd October, LT2, 11am

Ms. da Costa ‘Medieval manuscripts: Why they matter’

This lecture is a brief introduction to manuscripts, which will give you a basic understanding of how the Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts you'll study in Moderations Paper 3 were originally read. The first half of the lecture will cover how manuscripts were created and explain the key terms, like 'folios' and 'quires', which modern editors so often use. The second half will look at what manuscripts can tell us about the literary texts we read.

This lecture will cover material relevant to Mods papers 1 and 3, and FHS papers 3 and 9, as well as being relevant for course II students (especially paper A4).

Mr. McTague ‘The Materiality of Texts’

Texts are always transmitted to us by some kind of material process: writing; printing; speaking. This lecture examines how the physical form of texts affects their meanings, with particular reference to printed texts of the 17th and 18th centuries. The materiality of texts, it will be suggested, can tell us things about literary works that their verbal content does not – or can not – reveal. The lecture will look at three different early modern printed texts (from 1631, 1659, and 1726) in order to assess how their physicality influences readers’ interpretations.

This lecture will cover material relevant to Mods paper 1, and FHS papers 4, 5, and 7d (Dryden)

Mr. Whalen ‘Genetic Criticism’

Genetic criticism is the study of the composition process of literary works. Rather than reading only the final printed text, genetic critics analyse and interpret pre-publication materials such as the author’s notebooks, manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs. This lecture will show how genetic criticism differs from traditional philology and manuscript study by destabilizing the notion of “text”, focusing on the temporal dimension of writing, and regarding a work of literature as a process rather than a product. The textual uncertainties that arise from the study of pre-texts offer new ways to illuminate the published text. An author’s dead ends and earlier drafts allow us to see what the work could have become – like the deleted scenes on DVDs. This lecture will be particularly relevant to first- and third-year undergraduates studying twentieth-century literature, particularly Joyce, Eliot, and Woolf.

This lecture will cover material relevant to Mods papers 1, 2b, and FHS paper 7g (Woolf)

Doing English - Schedule for Michaelmas Term 2008

Lectures will take place on Wednesdays at 11am, in Lecture Theatre 2 at the English Faculty, from 2nd to 7th Week.


Weds 22 October (wk 2): Text Matters

11am Ms da Costa – Medieval manuscripts: Why they matter
11.30 Mr Mctague – The materiality of texts
12 Mr Whalen – Genetic criticism

Weds 29 October (wk 3): Authorship

11am Ms Robinson – Translation, adaptation and the medieval author
11.30 Mr Salamone – Reconstructing the early modern author
12 Mr Farrell – Anxiety and authorship in the romantic novel

Weds 5 November (wk 4): Genres

11am Ms Caughey – Medieval masculinities and genre
11.30 Ms Johnson – The modernist long poem;
12 Ms Farkas – Modernism and the genres of theatre
12.30 Ms McHugh – The epic and the early Stewarts

Weds 12 November (wk 5): Allusion and voice

11am Mr Walker – Allusion and the Tempest I: Theory and practice
11.30 Mr Roebuck – Allusion and the Tempest II: Rewritings
12 Ms Vanhensbergen – Female voice: women writers and the early modern
12.30 Mr Blades – Dialect and poetry: Heaney and Harrison

Weds 19 November (wk 6): Close reading and form

11am Ms Martin – Close reading: Ideas and ideals
11.30 Ms Green – Power and the sonnet: The case of Keats and the Elgin Marbles
12 Mr Tate – Reading poetic form

Weds 26 November (wk 7): Critical departures

11am Mr Macfadzean – Deconstructive reading
11.30 Ms Dunleavy – Introduction to queer theory
12 Mr Williams – Orientalism and postcolonialism