Course Catalogue

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'Thou sallow picture of my poisoned love, / My study's ornament, thou shell of Death' (Middleton, The Revenger's Tragedy). Early modern writers were fascinated to the point of obsession with the rich and generative intersection between desire and death. On this course, we will consider how and why male and female writers eroticised death. We will look at the crucial concept of the ars moriendi - the art of dying well - and at the art of elegy and epitaph, and how both inform literary representations. The course will draw on a wide range of poetry, prose, and drama from the Tudor, Jacobean, Caroline, and Restoration periods. Drawing on recent critical work in race, gender, sexuality, violence, taboo, and religion, students will be encouraged to consider several historical and theoretical perspectives on the surprisingly porous boundaries between desire and death in literary writings.

1x2hr seminar per week over 10 weeks as scheduled on MyCampus.

This is one of the Honours options in English Literature and may not run every year. The options that are running this session are available on MyCampus.

Successful completion of Junior Honours English Literature, and by arrangement to visiting students or students of other Honours programmes who qualify under the University's 25% regulation.

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The standard assessments for this course are: 

■ Dramaturgical exercise (1500 words) - 25% 

■ Essay (2500 words) - 50%

■ Presentation (7 minutes) --15% 

■ Seminar contribution - 10% 

If required, for instance where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, the following alternatives are available: 

■ There are no alternatives to the Dramaturgical exercise, but flexible deadlines can be offered as reasonable adjustment (Students should follow the usual process for extensions). 

■ There are no alternatives to the Essay, but flexible deadlines can be offered as reasonable adjustment (Students should follow the usual process for extensions). 

■ Recorded presentation or one-to-one presentation / discussion/Q&A with staff (where presentation would normally be in class) as alternative to presentation.

■ Written self-evaluation reflecting on seminar contribution or written response to seminar material in advance or after seminar as alternative to seminar contribution.

Further reasonable adjustments may be provided where necessary. Students are encouraged to consult with the course convenor.  

This course aims to:

■ Study the early modern culture of death and its eroticisation in a range of literary texts.

■ Analyse the representational practices used by writers to explore the intersection between the living and the dead, and critically explore how and why desire is so often framed via discourses of death.

■ Engage critically with a wide range of primary texts written between c.1550 and 1700.

■ Introduce students to a range of key historical and critical work in the field.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

· Trace changing literary attitudes towards desire and death across a range of early modern literary genres.

· Explore the different vocabularies and representative strategies used by early modern writers to depict desire and death on the page and stage.

· Make comparative connections between literary writings and other relevant forms of media (woodcuts, engravings, paintings, funerary monuments, music, etc).

· Evaluate a range of critical and historical approaches to the topic.

· Analyse early modern literary texts through the presentation of a coherent, sustained, and well evidenced argument.

-Develop their research skills and disciplinary understanding by applying their knowledge to previously unfamiliar topics and concepts in early modern culture.