LENGL5255 Satire, Feeling, Innovation: 18th Century and Romantic Period Poetry and Prose Course Descriptor

Course Overview

The period 1700-1830 is traditionally seen as split between the Augustan age, dominated by satire, and the Romantic period, where dynamic changes in literature reflect contemporary revolutionary politics; but by emphasising continuities, especially around the treatment of feeling, for example in the mid-century culture of Sensibility, as well as breaks, we question the validity of those distinctions. Alongside satire, sentimental writing and Romantic period poetry we look at the birth of the novel and polemical prose. Women writers feature across all genres of writing in this period. The course may introduce writers such as Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lawrence Sterne, Ignatius Sancho, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Smith, John Keats, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelly, Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen. Students are encouraged to think themselves into the period by visiting the many Georgian spaces, museums, collections and buildings that help shape modern London.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage students in their studies. The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

Lectures/seminars/labs/studios/workshops 

40 scheduled hours – typically including induction, consolidation or revision, and assessment activity hours.

• Version 1:all sessions in the same sized group

OR 

• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups. 

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions, office hours, and/or the VLE. 

Summative Assessments

The presentation will require students to share their analysis of how the literature and its genres relate to relevant cultural and historical contexts, including Georgian spaces visited.

The portfolio will demonstrate close reading and analytical skills in relation to the listed learning outcomes.

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours). 

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Sambrook, James, The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1700-1789 (London: Longman, 1993)
• Jarvis, Robin, The Romantic Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1789-1830 (London: Longman, 2004)
• Mullan, John, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)
• Bullard, Paddy (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)
• Gerrard, Christine (ed.), A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)
• Wu, Duncan (ed.), A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below are used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Gender 
• Landscape
• Consumer culture
• Sensibility
• Revolution