Module description
This module focuses on the rich and diverse range of literary and non-literary texts written in England during the early modern period (1500-1700). In this era, national populations exploded, international travel brought different peoples into contact, religious and political divides erupted into outright warfare – and increased literacy, access to print, and availability of paper meant that difference and debate could be published more readily. This course focuses on various kinds of 'contested voices' – including contests that were domestic, public, and international; life-and-death contests or those put on for purposes of diversion; contested ideas about gender, race, class, religion, and ideology. The course is designed to be flexible and to allow students to develop their own sense of the different kinds of argument, discord, and debate that characterized this period, and the many rich voices in which those contests were articulated.
This module is also distinct in making space for invited guest speakers from outside King's. We try to bring in both early career and more established scholars to speak about 'live' problems on which they are working, to give you a sense not only of a topic but how a scholar is thinking it through, how it fits into their own career path, and how you might model your own research topics on their process, as well as their findings.
Assessment details
1 x 3000-word essay
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to:
- Give students an advanced knowledge of a selection of early modern (1500-1700) literary and non-literary texts in English
- Develop students’ understanding of how early modern writers created distinctive authorial voices through a range of rhetorical and material techniques
- Encounter students with multiple sites of conflict in the period, including serious/non-serious, literary/non-literary, domestic/public; and including debated ideas about class, race, gender, and politics
- Introduce students to a range of teaching perspectives, via a mix of King’s lecturers and invited guest speakers
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students will have:
- gained a wider and deeper knowledge of canonical and non-canonical texts from c.1500-c.1700
- engaged with range of literary and non-literary methods for the study of authorial voice and for the study of ideas in conflict
- developed a strong sense of the critical and research skills necessary to write an appropriate essay at this level
- read, discussed and written about examples of some of the diverse kinds of authorial voice developed in the early modern period.
- improved their scholarly writing and depth of analytical thinking.
- engaged with and evaluated a range of different research approaches by working with both King’s staff and a series of invited guest speakers
Teaching pattern
1 x 2-hour seminar, weekly