| Unit name | The Alchemy of Influence: Imitation, Translation, and Creativity |
|---|---|
| Unit code | FREN30131 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Tomlinson |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you may not take alongside this one |
None |
| School/department | Department of French |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Why is this unit important?
In his radically irreverent Essais, Michel de Montaigne repeatedly plunders ideas and turns of phrase from fellow writers, sometimes acknowledging borrowings, sometimes disguising them. The result is not, as you might imagine, a mishmash of plagiarised passages, but, as Montaigne proudly declares, a work of extraordinary innovation, ‘the only book in the world of its kind’. Modern culture prizes originality. Yet this cult of the new is a recent phenomenon and hides a universal truth: that all forms of creation are indebted to the alchemical forces of influence.
In this unit, you will develop your agility as reader and writer, inspired by the cultural theory of imitation. This is an approach to composition that has roots in classical culture and that took on new vigour during the Renaissance. It found a particular, powerful, and political expression in France, where vernacular writers sought to assert their autonomy and modernity by imitating, and then surpassing, the cultural habits of the past.
How does this unit fit into your programme of study?
This theoretical and practical unit complements cultural history, linguistics, and translation options offered by the School of Modern Languages. It embodies the meeting of culture and language that is fundamental to your degree programme and draws on the skills you have developed as philologists (literally, lovers of language) to undertake creatively rigorous acts of cultural empathy and imagination that both honour the particularities of past cultures and give voice to your individual and contemporary interests and values.
An overview of content
In this unit, you will discover how early-modern French cultural institutions – whether radical schools, canny publishing houses, or fashionable literary coteries – endorsed imitation as the cornerstone of learning and creativity. You will examine 15th and 16th-century theories and practices of style and ask what status the authorial voice gains in a culture in which French writers made their mark not by chasing a fantasy of ex-nihilo originality but by playing subtly yet distinctively with inherited conventions. Once familiar with these histories of creation, you will examine a selection of 20th and 21st-century writings on influence, intertextuality, and style and will develop a working knowledge of the specialist languages and codes used by editors and proof-readers today. Armed with this understanding and analytical toolkit, you will undertake your own acts of creation in the shape of summative exercises of collaborative translation and individual composition.
How will students, personally, be different as a result of the unit?
You will gain a nuanced understanding of the history of translation and style during a foundational period in French and European cultural history. This specialist knowledge will give you the confidence to undertake your own acts of collaborative translation and individual imitative composition, in each case demonstrating flexibility in your prose style and authoritative agility in explaining the choices over method and approach that inform your creations. You will have practised autonomy in selecting your choice of subject for each assessment and demonstrated cultural sensitivity both in the way you handle cultural objects from a distant past and in working with others through the diplomatic precision of peer review (including applying techniques of proof-reading and editing) and in the group translation project.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
The unit consists of weekly seminars, interactive in character and with regular opportunity for in-class formative work. Seminars will be structured by tutor-led presentations and mini lectures and will include practical exercises that help you gain confidence and sharpen your skills in the close cultural and linguistic analysis that will inform your assessed acts of translation and composition. The creative work that you will undertake in the unit may be new to you, and hence discombobulate as well as engage you. Seminars will be designed from the outset to foster a supportive environment that enables and encourages intellectual risk-taking, free of judgement, and which will help you practise your own skills of sensitive constructive criticism in response to the work of others.
For the second assessment, the unit asks you to respond actively to tutor feedback and to rework your submission, making student response to feedback an explicit part of the assessment in the shape not only of the revised composition but of a Reflections document that is part of the Imitation Portfolio.
Tasks which help you learn and prepare you for summative tasks (formative):
Tasks which count towards your unit mark (summative):
When assessment does not go to plan
When required by the Board of Examiners, you will normally complete reassessments in the same formats as those outlined above. However, the Board reserves the right to modify the form or number of reassessments required. Details of reassessments are normally confirmed by the School shortly after the notification of your results at the end of the academic year.
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. FREN30131).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the University Workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The assessment methods listed in this unit specification are designed to enable students to demonstrate the named learning outcomes (LOs). Where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, schools will make reasonable adjustments to support a student to demonstrate the LO by an alternative method or with additional resources.
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. For appropriate assessments, if you have self-certificated your absence, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (for assessments at the end of TB1 and TB2 this is usually in the next re-assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any exceptional circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
