• • Home
  • Undergraduate Study
• • Postgrad English
  • Postgrad Creative Writing
• • Research
  • Staff
• • News & Events
  • Contact Us
• • Resources for Current Students

Undergraduate Menu

Search using keywords/tags or full text search.

ENGL 201: The Theory and Practice of Criticism

(incorporating ENGL 201 Practical: Close Reading)

Course Aims and Objectives:
ENGL 201 is the core course in English at Lancaster. It addresses fundamental questions about the status, value, and interpretation of texts: What is literature? Why are some literary and cultural texts deemed to be exceptionally valuable? What are the best ways of reading these texts? 201 poses these questions in the context of recent debates about language, politics, gender, selfhood, culture and national identity. Students on 201 will discover the major critical concepts and debates of recent years and assess their strengths and limitations as models of literary interpretation. A couple of novels will be used to exemplify, explore and re-think these concepts. The course will consider the ways in which critical theory has challenged traditional assumptions about literature and criticism; it will examine the debates that have opened up between different theoretical schools of thought; and it will enable students to deploy theoretical terms and concepts in their own acts of reading. Its overall aim is to make students more rigorous, sophisticated and inventive in their readings of literary and cultural texts.

Assessment:
1 x 1,500-word essay (20%); 1 x group oral presentation (30%); 1 x 4,000-word project (50%).

Submission Deadlines:
Essay = by 12 noon on Monday of Week 8/Term 1
Group presentations = Term 2, Weeks 7-10
Project = 12 noon, Monday of Week 2/Term 3

Contact:
Weekly seminars (50 minutes beginning week 1) and two weekly lectures.

Learning Outcomes:
You should

• have developed a wide knowledge of the various contemporary approaches to literary interpretation
• be able to participate knowledgeably in debates over the value and purpose of criticism
• be familiar with the differences between traditional and theoretical assumptions about literature
• be familiar with the debates between different theoretical schools of thought
• be able to deploy theoretical ideas and vocabulary as part of the detailed analysis of literary texts
• have become more sophisticated and discerning in your use of secondary material
• have developed your skills of written and oral communication

Set Texts:
Anthony Easthope and Kate McGowan, eds, A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, 2nd edition (Open University Press, 2004).  PLEASE NOTE: You must buy the second edition of this text.

Term 1: Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Penguin or OUP World’s Classics editions are recommended, but any affordable paperback edition will do.)

Term 2: J.G. Ballard, High-Rise (any edition will do)

Lecturers: AHB = Dr Arthur Bradley; AWT = Dr Andrew Tate; BB= Dr Brian Baker; CLS = Dr Catherine Spooner; LCM= Dr Lindsey Moore; LOB = Dr Liz Oakley-Brown; LP= Prof Lynne Pearce; MG= Dr Michael Greaney; SJS = Professor John Schad

Lecture Programme. Seminars will follow the lecture programme.

Term 1

Term 2

Term 3

Lecture Programme

Term 1

Term 2

Back to: E.CW 200

Forward to: ENGL 202

Courses Index