Module: ENG5111-20 Equivocal Matter

Level: 5

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Faith Binckes

Module Tutor Contact Details: f.binckes@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

This module has been designed as a complement to ‘Structure and Subject’ in Semester 1. It will cover fictional prose and drama, two genres not addressed in the earlier module, and will require you to complete a Personal Development Plan (PDP). The PDP is an embedded employability element, co-organised with the Careers Service. It requires you to think about and to articulate the narrative of your own life and interests to date, and to attend workshops and seminars that will help you to map out a potential professional future.

‘Equivocal Matter’ is a quotation from one of the set texts, indicating the module’s interest in forms of art that cause us to question the processes of making meaning (material processes in particular), and which conspicuously challenge settled traditions of representation. The set texts are drawn from two different periods-- the mid-eighteenth century and the mid-twentieth century -- and engage with central political, philosophical and existential questions of their times. Both defy simple categorisation, and play on the boundary between the disgracefully comic and the deeply serious. Both can be considered highly experimental, and yet their engagement with primary human experiences and emotions has ensured their enduring relevance to diverse readers and audiences. This module will allow these texts to be explored sequentially, but will also encourage a cumulative awareness of their impact and legacy.

The module’s aims and objectives are:

• to consider the operation, development, and transgression of literary and dramatic genres and traditions

• to explore and analyse the significance of the material embodiment of the literary work (its ‘medium’ – print, language, form of ‘publication’, staging, etc), and the processes involved in textual and theatrical production

• to enable you to engage in analytical critical practice that shows nuanced awareness of the above factors

• to encourage you to construct, and to articulate, a narrative of personal and professional development

• to challenge your existing literary and critical preconceptions

2. Outline syllabus:

The texts studies on this module comprise a novel and two short plays, all of which foreground the materiality of page and stage, demonstrating the ways in which medium is vital to message. All three texts demonstrate a keen awareness of the generic conventions they so thoroughly subvert, challenging readers to engage with the nuances of language and of narrative tradition. They also invite us to consider a range of key philosophical, literary, and visual texts from their period. These approaches will in turn further pursue the questions of canon formation and periodicity that will have been introduced in Critical Reading 3.

EMPLOYABILITY

You will write your PDP, and attend seminars on the subject, whilst attending lectures on the first set texts in the very first weeks of term. This layering of tasks will encourage you to view the PDP as an intellectual, as well as a pragmatic, aspect of the module, and will allow you to engage with the narrative craft of self-presentation in studying literature and writing your PDP.

3. Teaching and learning activities:

As well as lectures, seminars and independent study, the module also includes workshops, and tutorials dedicated to accessing university support services, career planning, and writing a PDP.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: Course Work

• Description: PDP (1500 words)

• % Weighting: Pass/Fail

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: Course Work

• Description: Comparative Essay (3500 words)

• % Weighting: 100%