| Unit name | Elegy |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL29010 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Dr. Lyon |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None. |
| Co-requisites |
None. |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit will focus on major elegies and elegists in English literature, and a selection of elegies by contemporary elegists. Among the elegies studied will be John Milton's Lycidas, Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonais, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam; and among the elegists studied will be Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Gray, John Keats, Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, Thom Gunn and Paul Muldoon. Preparatory reading, in addition to the primary texts, will often include essays or chapters on particular elegies or elegists and, more occasionally, of contextual or theoretical relevance. The structure of the unit is broadly chronological, with a seminar on contemporary elegies chosen by students also a feature.
Aims:
The unit aims to provide the opportunity for students to acquire a critical understanding of a dozen or so of the major elegies and elegists in English and of the Elegy as a literary genre (both in its chronology and in its intertextual relations). It will offer, by means of informed discussion, an investigating of the elegy in English from the Renaissance to the present day. Students will be expected to acquire a detailed understanding of a wide range of elegies in English and a working knowledge of some of the most important critical writing on Elegy. Students will acquire their critical understanding of elegies and of Elegy through their primary and secondary reading, and through seminar discussion and coursework essays.
Students should have read widely in elegiac writing in English, and also in criticism of Elegy. They should have acquired a theoretically and historically aware and critically independent knowledge and understanding of Elegy as a literary genre, and thus have developed a deepened appreciation of its intrinsic and extrinsic creative interest and importance throughout the writing of poetry in English.
Weekly seminars.
Two summative essays: one 2,000 word essay (33.3%); and one 4,000-word essay (66.7%).
