Teaching Responsibility

LJMU Schools involved in Delivery:

Humanities and Social Science

Learning Methods

Lecture
Seminar
Tutorial

Module Offerings

6133ENGL-JAN-MTP

Aims

1. Introduce students to a variety of writings that envision fictional worlds or respond to changing conceptions of the world through real and imaginary journeys.
2. Enable students to be conversant with a range of recent historical, critical and theoretical approaches to utopian fictions, travel writing, natural philosophy and the birth of scientific method in the early modern period.
3. Expand students’ knowledge and understanding of the historical, cultural and social conditions in which texts were produced and read.
4. Develop students’ knowledge and understanding of attitudes to race, gender, and identity.

Learning Outcomes

1.
understand how geopolitical locales – both real and imagined – influence how texts are composed and consumed.
2.
know the significance of historical perspectives in interpreting literature and how culture both shapes and is shaped by literary texts.
3.
read and interpret text to an advanced level, applying relevant theoretical and critical approaches.

Module Content

Outline Syllabus:
[Indicative only]

Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller
Selections from Humphrey Llwyd, The Breviary of Britain
Edmund Spenser, The View of the present state of Ireland
Selections from Richard Hakulyt, Voyages and Discoveries
Selections from Gulbadan Begam, Humayunnama
Francis Bacon, New Atlantis
Phillip Massinger, The Renagado
William Davenant, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru
Selections from Thomas Coryate, Crudities
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
Aphra Behn, The Emperor of the Moon
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters
Ouladah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative
Module Overview:
This module will deepen your understanding of the early modern world (or worlds) through attention to travel writing, early science fiction, early colonialism, and approaches to race and slavery, through topics such as the representation of piracy, and utopian writing.
Additional Information:
This module studies English literature from the late sixteenth century through the eighteenth century to examine how ways of understanding the world influenced the writing of canonical and non-canonical texts. Imaginative writing and natural philosophy both sought to understand the world and the wider universe. This period witnessed radical developments in how the world was plotted and traversed, and the Copernican Revolution changed the planetary order of the universe; the reordering of the cosmos allowed the possibility of voyages to other inhabited worlds and also raised questions regarding religion and the salvation of aliens. Running parallel to these imagined worlds, migration was forced on those sold into slavery and the Grand Tour furthered a gentleman’s education. Students will deepen their understanding of travel writing, early science fiction, the reception and representation of piracy, early colonialism, and approaches to race and slavery.

Assessments

Essay
Essay