Lecturer

Dr. Rudolph Glitz

Objectives

The student is able to:

• close reading literary texts
• interpreting selected passages from a literary text with reference to the text as a whole
• evaluating other reader’s interpretations of a given text (or passage)
• engaging critically with other reader’s arguments in favour of their interpretation
• clearly expressing the results of the above activities both orally and in writing
• recognizing the importance of cultural-historical context in the practice of interpretation

Contents

Welcome to ‘Unputdownable’. This course is designed for students with no academic background but a strong interest in Anglophone literature. If you enjoy reading, thinking, and creatively engaging with literature of all major genres, you have chosen the right course. In it, we will train some of the basic close-reading and arguing techniques used in the field of literary studies. With their help, we will explore a small sample of the most celebrated works of literature from the English literary tradition. These will include Shakespeare’s early modern Hamlet, Virginia Woolf’s modernist classic To the Lighthouse, Angela Carter’s postmodernist tour-de-force Nights at the Circus, and a selection of canonical poems and short stories ranging from the 18^th century to the present day.

Recommended prior knowledge

Fluent and largely grammatically correct spoken and written English. Some reading experience with and enthusiasm for literature of any kind. All literature majors are excluded from taking the course.

Format

Seminars, lectures and selfstudy.

Study materials

Three longer texts need to be bought by students, namely:
- Shakespeare’s Hamlet (preferably the latest scholarly Oxford edition),
- Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (preferably the latest Penguin edition),
- Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (Vintage edition)

The rest of the materials will be made available online.

Costs

The price of the above-mentioned books.

Assessment

- continuous blog post requirement (5% of the overall grade)

- in-class test on poetic terms, poetry analysis, and secondary reading (25% of the overall grade)

- final ‘close-reading’ essay (70% of the overall grade)

Entry requirements

Second and third year students participating in an Honours Programme. This course is taught at the level of second-year students.

Registration

Registration is possible for 2nd year (of higher) students participating in an Honours programme from 7 June 2018 10.00 till 11 June 2018 23.00 through the online registration form that will appear on Honoursmodules IIS.

Placement will be at random. If there are still spots open after the application deadline, students will still be able to register.

Time table

• Start in November / Tuesdays 18-20h / Location PC Hoofthuis 5.08 (this will also appear on Datanose soon)

Number of participants

25