Reading Genre 1 Q3122 (Autumn 2014)
Reading Genre 2 Q3125 (Spring 2015)
General Information
Overall Module Description
How do texts locate themselves in literary conventions to develop their own expression
and meaning? How do other media such as film transform literary genre? How does genre
act to shape a text and a reader’s understanding of it? How do we identify and understand
genre?
These are some of the questions that we shall approach in these two interlinked modules
by focussing on five genres: epic and comedy in Teaching Block 1, and lyric, tragedy, and
film noir in Teaching Block 2. For each genre we shall concentrate on a small number of
representative examples, allowing us to widen our understanding of the genre while we
deepen our acquaintance with key illustrations from it.
A crucial aim of Reading Genre is to help you to develop your close reading skills, so
seminars and lectures will combine larger ideas about genre (for instance, ideas of
imitation, the politics of genre, and tragic theory, among other topics) with detailed
explorations of specific examples.
The two modules of Reading Genre may be taken consecutively or independently of one
another.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of Reading Genre 1 and 2, a successful student will be able to
 Identify selected literary genres and critically apply them in textual analysis.
 Identify the main genres of lyric poetry and critically apply them in addressing issues
of poetic meaning.
 Demonstrate some understanding of Chaucerian Middle English.
 Identify and critically apply Chaucer’s use of genre in selected Canterbury tales.
 Show some understanding of genre theory across a broad historic range.
 Understand how literary form influences writing and reading practices.
 Show developed critical thinking and methods for literary analysis.
Assessment
Definitive assessment information for both modules, including exact submission deadlines,
will be published on Sussex Direct.
Reading Genre 1 is assessed by a presentation, worth 30 per cent of the mark, to be given
during the module (your tutor will give you further guidance on this); and by an essay,
worth 70 per cent of the mark, to be submitted at the end of the module. Please refer to
Sussex Direct for details of word limit and the submission deadline.
Reading Genre 2 is assessed by a presentation, worth 30 per cent of the mark, to be given
during the module (your tutor will give you further guidance on this); and by an essay,
worth 70 per cent of the mark, to be submitted at the end of the module. Please refer to
Sussex Direct for details of word limit and the submission deadline.
Attendance Requirements
The two modules of Reading Genre involve one one-hour lecture and one two-hour
seminar each week. There will also be a number of film screenings in Reading Genre 2
which you should attend. You will be notified of the details of times and venues via Sussex
Direct.
It is vital for you to attend seminars and lectures. If you do not attend, you will miss an
essential and substantive portion of the modules, including insights from experts on the
texts and topics (in lectures), and collaborative in-class discussion guided by your tutor (in
seminars). Your experience and achievement in the modules will be detrimentally affected
by non-attendance. You may also miss important practical information and advice about
the modules.
If you miss a seminar because of illness or for another good cause, you should email the
tutor, if possible in advance of the class. Persistent absentees will be flagged for
monitoring by School staff. If your attendance is unsatisfactory, you will receive a formal
letter of warning from your tutor. If you continue to miss classes without good reason, you
will be required to attend a meeting with a member of the School Management Group.
Academic Misconduct and Plagiarism
It is vital for your own integrity as a person, a thinker, and a writer that you avoid academic
misconduct and plagiarism. Moreover, the School of English carefully scrutinises students’
writing for academic misconduct and plagiarism. Academic misconduct and plagiarism
carry heavy penalties. These can include the deduction of marks for an assignment, failing
an assignment, failing a module, failing your degree, and being disqualified from the
University.
So that you have a clear understanding of what plagiarism is, please review this definition
provided by the University’s Academic Office:
“Plagiarism is the use, without acknowledgement, of the intellectual work of other people,
and the act of representing the ideas or discoveries of another as one's own in written
work submitted for assessment. To copy sentences, phrases or even striking expressions
without acknowledgement of the source (either by inadequate citation or failure to indicate
verbatim quotations), is plagiarism; to paraphrase without acknowledgement is likewise
plagiarism. Where such copying or paraphrase has occurred the mere mention of the
source in the bibliography shall not be deemed sufficient acknowledgement; each such
instance must be referred specifically to its source. Verbatim quotations must be either in
inverted commas, or indented, and directly acknowledged.”
Please make it a priority to check the University’s “Writing Well” web pages at
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/index.php?id=26
In particular, make sure you follow the links to the pages on “Referencing” and “Academic
misconduct.” These pages provide further information about what plagiarism is. They also
provide resources that will help you to avoid plagiarism, including information on
referencing and access to Turnitin, a service that allows you to check your work for
plagiarism. Finally, in your submitted work, make sure that you select and consistently use
one referencing system. It is important that your referencing is correct and consistent. You
can find information about referencing on the “Writing Well” web page.
Core Primary Reading
You must make sure to get hold of the books listed below in time for the start of the
module for which they are assigned. These books are available at a specially discounted
price from John Smith’s book shop, in the University Library.
For Reading Genre 1
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988, third edn, reissued 2008).
 Milton, John, Paradise Lost, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008, rev. edn). (For other suitable editions, see the
information in the module outline.)
 Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Everyman's Library Classics,
1992)
For Reading Genre 2

Euripides, Medea, trans. Rex Warner, in Euripides I, The Complete Greek
Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press,
1955) (and much reprinted), or: Morwood, James, trans., Euripides: Medea and
other plays (Oxford World’s Classics, 1998).

Ibsen, Henrik, Doll’s House, in Four Major Plays, trans. James McFarlane and
Jens Arup (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008).

Kane, Sarah, Blasted, in Sarah Kane: Complete Plays (Methuen Contemporary
Dramatists, 2001).

Duncan Wu (ed), Romanticism: An Anthology (third edition) (Blackwell, 2005)
Recommended reading (further reading that is not required but recommended) is listed in
the detailed information for each part of the module.
Reading Genre 1
Week 1: Introducing Genre
Lecture 1: Catherine Packham [Seminar: Ralph Cohen, 'History and Genre']
The word ‘genre’ comes from an ancient quasi-scientific term, meaning kind, sort, or class,
which has been applied to literature, film, and other arts. It may be used descriptively, to
signal broadly what to expect from a given work and how to approach it, or prescriptively,
to suggest what a particular kind of work ought to be. There is scope for considerable
tension between description and prescription, between what is there and what it is felt
ought to be there, and genre in itself can be a stimulus and a challenge to creative artists
to push beyond expectations and established boundaries. The lecture will consider ‘genre’
alongside other terms such as ‘style’ and ‘convention’, briefly indicate some of the most
enduring genres in literary history, and reflect on the significant continuities and
discontinuities illuminated by genre-based literary analysis.
Required Reading
 Cohen, Ralph, ‘History and Genre’, New Literary History, 17:2 (1986), 201-18.
 Oxford English Dictionary entries on ‘genre’ and ‘gender’.
 Dubrow, Heather, Genre (Methuen, 1982).
Recommended Reading
Duff, David, ed., Modern Genre Theory (Longman, 1999).
Fowler, Alastair, Kinds of Literature (Oxford University Press, 1982).
Frow, John, Genre (Routledge, 2005).
Gledhill, Christine, ‘Genre', in The Cinema Book, ed. Pam Cook (British Film Institute,
1985).
Todorov, Tzvetan, Genres in Discourse (1978), trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
Weeks 2-6: Epic and Milton’s Paradise Lost
Lecture 1 (Week 2): Tom Healy [Seminar: Book 4, The Aeneid]
Epic occupies the pinnacle of literary genres within Western cultures. Epics seek to convey
large, often monumental, visions that are frequently celebrated as formative of a culture’s
ideals and values. How did epic come to occupy this role? This lecture will seek to place
Milton and his vision for Paradise Lost within the Western epic tradition that preceded him,
especially Virgil (but also Homer, Ovid, Dante), and that (in English) which follows him
(e.g. Wordsworth, Joyce, Walcott).
Lecture 2 (Week 3): Tom Healy [Seminar: Paradise Lost]
The lecture will explore the question of Christian epic. Milton adapted the conventions of
classical epic and reinvented them for his Christian epic and the story of the fall of man,
but how do Christian perceptions of suffering or providence combine with the largely
Classical heroic model that informs the Western epic tradition? The lecture will explore the
moments in Paradise Lost where the poet notably brings attention to himself and his place
within epic: the openings of Books 1, 3, 7, and 9.
Lecture 3 (Week 4): Tom Healy [Seminar: Paradise Lost]
The lecture will explore Milton’s rhetoric and what Christopher Ricks described as his
“grand style”. Milton’s poetic expression is not simply a vehicle for his ideas; the ideas
themselves are shaped by the poetic expression. As such, the lecture will focus on the
language of epic poetry focussing especially on Satan’s temptation of Eve in Book 9, but
also passages from Books 2, 4 and 10. We shall also consider Milton’s use of epic simile.
Lecture 4 (Week 5): Tom Healy [Seminar: Paradise Lost]
What constitutes the heroic is a key aspect of epic. Epic writers regularly challenge
previous notions of the heroic and Milton is no exception in Paradise Lost. Can Satan be
imagined as heroic? Can an omnipotent deity assume heroic status? Can Adam and Eve,
who fail the testing of their resolve and obedience, be imagined as heroic? Notably
through exploring Books 4 and 10, the lecture will consider how Milton asks his readers to
re-think conceptions of what the heroic consists of, particularly in relation to gender.
Lecture 5 (Week 6): Tom Healy [Seminar: Paradise Lost]
A key aspect of epic since Virgil has been the development of the ‘heroic’ reader, how the
reader’s act of understanding forms an important aspect of the epic tradition. This lecture
will explore how the epic tradition attempts to provoke particular types of reading and thus
of understanding. The lecture will consider the nature of Milton’s epic vision and how it
invites readers to reconfigure knowledge in other spheres such as history and politics.
Required Reading for Epic (Recommended Editions)
 Virgil, The Aeneid
The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Everyman's Library Classics, 1992).
Aeneid, trans. Frederick Ahl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Paradise Lost, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008, rev edn).
 John Milton, Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost, ed. John Leonard (London: Penguin, 2003).
Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler (London: Longman, 2006, 2nd edn). [This is an edition
with copious notes of explanation and annotation. It is more expensive than the above.]
Paradise Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Oxford: Blackwell Books, 2007). [A nicely
produced book with good notes, if not as extensive as Fowler.]
Recommended Reading for Epic
A good introductory critical book for Milton is Christopher Ricks’ Milton's Grand Style
(Clarendon Press, 1963; new edn 1978). Also recommended are the essays in Section Six
of The Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. by Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith Oxford
University Press, 2009).
There is also a helpful website for those new to Milton and Paradise Lost (contributed to
and edited by Katherine Fletcher, now a Sussex DPhil student):
http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/darknessvisible/sitemap.html#paradiselost
Further Recommended Reading for Epic
Blessington. Francis C., Paradise Lost and the Classical Epic (Routledge, 1979).
Burrow, Colin, Epic Romance: Homer to Milton (Oxford University Press, 1993).
Lewalski, Barbara K., Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms (Princeton
University Press, 1985).
Martindale, Charles, John Milton and the Transformation of Ancient Epic (Croom Helm,
1986), esp. pp. 1-52.
Quint, David, Epic and Empire (Princeton University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 9-96; 248-324.
Week 7 (31 Oct-6 Nov): Reading Week
During Week 7 you should work on reading the three tales set from Chaucer’s The
Canterbury Tales in Middle English.
Weeks 8-12: Comedy and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Lecture 1 (Week 8): Katie Walter [Seminar: Old French Fabliaux and Dame
Sirith]
A ‘fabliau’, a term that means ‘little fable’, is a genre that might be defined as ‘a brief verse
tale, usually scurrilous or obscene’. It is a genre of comedy popular in the Middle Ages,
and one with which Chaucer, one of the greatest English poets, experiments in his story
collection, The Canterbury Tales. In this first lecture, we will look at some definitions of
comedy, explore the history of the fabliaux, and consider how its comic elements can be
situated in a broader history of comedy in England. The lecture will draw on examples
(read for the seminar) of some Old French fabliaux (in translation), and one of the earliest
surviving example of a fabliau in the English language, Dame Sirith.
Required Reading
Old French Fabliaux – in Modern English translation (available online)
 Jean Bodel (French fabliau, 1190-1194), ‘Gombert and the Two Clerks’, from Larry
D. Benson and Theodore M. Andersson, The Literary Context of Chaucer's
Fabliaux. Indianapolis and New York, 1971. Pp. 89-99.
http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/litsubs/fabliaux/gombert.html
 Guèrin (French fabliau, early 13th cent.) ‘Bèrenger of the Long Arse’, from Larry D.
Benson and Theodore M. Andersson, The Literary Context of Chaucer's Fabliaux.
Indianapolis and New York, 1971. Pp. 11-25.
http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/litsubs/fabliaux/berenger.html
Dame Sirith – in Modern English translation by Joseph Wittig:
http://www.unc.edu/~jwittig/51/sirith.htm
[You could also consult the Middle English, also available online, in a scholarly edition,
edited by Eve Salisbury: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/dsfrm.htm]
Recommended Reading
Keith, Busby, 'Dame Sirith and De Clerico et Puella', in Companion to Early Middle English
Literature, ed. N. H.G. E. Veldhoen and H. Aertsen. Amsterdam: Free University Press,
1998, pp.69 – 81.
Bloch, Howard R., The Scandal of the Fabliaux (University of Chicago Press, 1986)
Norris J. Lacy, Reading fabliaux. New York, 1993
Lecture 2 (Week 9): Katie Walter [Seminar: ‘The Knight’s Tale’]
In the next three lectures we turn our attention to Chaucer's comedy and his experiments
with genre in The Canterbury Tales. In particular, Chaucer experiments with the ways in
which story depends on an audience’s knowledge of the conventions of a particular genre,
but also the way in which comedy can be derived from breaking those conventions or
parodying them. The first three tales of The Canterbury Tales make up a sequence,
including a romance and two fabliaux. The power (and the comedy) of the two fabliaux
depend in part on parodying the conventions of the romance that has come before them.
This week's lecture therefore introduces the genre of romance, as it is set out in ‘The
Knight’s Tale’, in order to begin exploring how Chaucer responds to and plays with the
conventions of genre to create comic effect.
Required Reading
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 'The Knight's Tale', in The Riverside Chaucer, third edition,
edited by Larry D. Benson (Oxford University Press, 1988, reissued 2008)
You may also consult the interlinear translation available online:
http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/kt-par0.htm
Lecture 3 (Week 10): Katie Walter [Seminar: ‘The Miller’s Prologue and Tale’]
This lecture focuses on ‘The Miller's Tale’, which is the first fabliau in The Canterbury
Tales, and which follows on directly from the Knight’s romance. We will consider the
relationship both of fabliaux and romance, and of Chaucer’s ‘Miller’s Tale’ to the genre of
fabliau more generally, making specific reference again to the Old French fabliaux and
Dame Sirith looked at in the first week of this block.
Required Reading
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 'The Miller's Prologue and Tale', in The Riverside Chaucer, third
edition, edited by Larry D. Benson (Oxford University Press, 1988, reissued 2008)
You may also consult the interlinear translation available online:
http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/milt-par.htm
Lecture 4 (Week 11): Katie Walter [Seminar: ‘The Reeve’s Prologue and Tale’]
‘The Reeve's Tale’ takes the comic mode of the fabliaux to its violent, dark extremes. This
lecture will explore the comedy of the ‘Reeve's Tale’ and the ways in which genre
conventions are exploited to achieve it. If in this tale, but also in The Canterbury Tales as a
whole, Chaucer can be seen to be pushing the limits of genre, we will also consider in this
lecture the role of genre in questions of tradition and innovation in the literature of the
medieval period.
Required Reading
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 'The Reeve's Prologue and Tale', in The Riverside Chaucer,
third edition, edited by Larry D. Benson (Oxford University Press, 1988, reissued
2008)
You may also consult the interlinear translation available online:
http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/rvt-par.htm
Lecture 5 (Week 12): Katie Walter, ‘Genre and Periodization’ [Seminar: review
and discussion.]
While no new reading is required for this week, you might like to watch
(available on You Tube) Buster Keaton’s short, silent film Scarecrow and/or
One Week.
This final lecture thinks about genre in terms of periodization and literary history.
Referring back to both epic and comedy, we will consider the place and influence of these
early works – Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales and Milton’s seventeenthcentury Paradise Lost – on later works and developments in these genres. In particular, we
will consider some case studies of later forms of comedy.
Further Recommended Reading for Comedy and Chaucer
Cooper, Helen, The Canterbury Tales (Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1996).
D’Arcens, Louise, Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Brewer,
2014)
Hirsh, John, Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales: A Short Introduction (Blackwell Books,
2002).
Lewis, Robert Enzer, ‘The English Fabliau and Chaucer's the Miller's Tale’, Modern
Philology, 79 (1982), 241-55.
Phillips, Helen, An Introduction to the Canterbury Tales: Reading, Fiction, Context
(Macmillan, 1999).
Reading Genre 2
Week 1: Introducing Genre 2
Lecture 1 (Week 1): Pam Thurschwell [Seminar: Hayden White, 'The Historical
Text as Literary Artifact']
How can we tell the difference between history and myth? Does history have a genre? In
his article, 'The History Text as Literary Artifact' the critic Hayden White argues that
'Historical situations do not have built into them intrinsic meanings in the way that literary
texts do. Historical situations are not inherently tragic, comic, or romantic' (1540). Do you
agree? In this lecture, taking off from White’s arguments, I’ll consider the possibility that
our ideas about history and the literary are intertwined, and that we unconsciously use
different literary genres all the time, to understand our lives and our current historical and
political situations. I’ll consider briefly how assumptions about genre might affect our
enjoyment and understanding of the things we read and the lives we lead. I’ll use some
contemporary examples to make connections between gender and genre, and I will briefly
introduce the three genres you will be studying in Reading Genre 2: lyric, tragedy and film
noir.
Required Reading
 White, Hayden, 'The Historical Text as Literary Artifact', The Norton Anthology of
Theory and Criticism, 2nd edn (Norton, 2010), pp. 1533-1553.
Recommended Reading
Duff, David, ed., Modern Genre Theory (Longman, 1999).
Fowler, Alastair, Kinds of Literature (Oxford University Press, 1982).
Frow, John, Genre (Routledge, 2005).
Gerhart, Mary, Genre Choices, Gender Questions (University of Oklahoma Press, 1993,
new edn).
Gledhill, Christine, 'Genre', in The Cinema Book, ed. Pam Cook (British Film Institute,
1985).
Weeks 2-4: Lyric
The first two weeks of the Lyric block will ask students to think in detail about two particular
types of lyric, the sonnet and the ode. The two lectures will offer close readings of some
original, challenging or successful sonnets and odes by Wordsworth and by Keats. A brief
history of the forms and how poets and critics have thought them will give some sense of
how they have been enlarged, complicated and refined since their first introduction into
English. We will ask what was at stake for Wordsworth and Keats in their complex
inheritance of the forms, why they chose to write in them, and how they re-imagined them;
and finally, we will offer a theoretical reflection on the significance of poetic form in general.
The lectures will say something about the special difficulties both poets experienced in
practising these forms, and something about what they thought could be done with them.
Students should by the end of the lectures be able both to read individual sonnets and
odes with an appreciation of their formal and technical accomplishment, and to think
historically and speculatively about the meaning of poetic forms and types.
.
Required Reading
All texts are available in Duncan Wu (ed.), Romanticism: An Anthology (third edition)
(Blackwell, 2005). Make sure you read the assigned texts in time for the lecture on them.
Lecture 1 (Week 2): Keston Sutherland [Seminar: Sonnets]
 Wordsworth, ‘The world is too much with us’, ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’,
‘Written in London’, ‘London’, ‘Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room’, ‘These
words were uttered in a pensive mood’, ‘October, 1803’, ‘To B.R. Haydon, Esq.’,
‘While not a leaf seems faded’, ‘Scorn not the Sonnet’
 Keats, the seventeen sonnets collected in Poems (1817), plus (from the Literary
Remains) ’When I have fears that I may cease to be’, ‘To Homer’, ‘To J.R.’, ‘To
sleep’, ‘On Fame’, ‘Why did I laugh to-night?’, ‘If by dull rhymes our English must be
chain’d’, ‘Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art’, ‘O though whose face hath
felt the Winter’s wind’.
Lecture 2: (Week 3): Keston Sutherland [Seminar: Odes]
 Wordsworth, ‘Ode to Duty’, ‘Ode (“There was a time”)’, ’Ode composed upon an
evening of extraordinary splendour and beauty’;
 Keats, ‘Ode to Psyche’, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘To Autumn’, ’Ode on a Grecian Urn’.
Recommended Reading
Bate, Jonathan. The Song of the Earth. Harvard UP, 2000.
Bate, W. Jackson. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet. Norton, 1972.
Hosek, Chaviva, and Patricia Parker, eds., Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1985).
Johnson, W. R. The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient and Modern Poetry (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. Hogarth Press, new edition, 1985.
Lecture 3 (Week 4): Amy Milka [Seminar: Lyric Poetry, Professionalism and
Politics]
This lecture will focus on some major women poets of the Romantic period, including
Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Helen Maria Williams. In a
period where female readers and writers were often stigmatised, and professional
authorship was often deemed unseemly, these women held their own. Through the use of
lyric poetry, they were not only able to engage in the literary and creative debates of their
time, but also to participate in typically ‘masculine’ realms of commentary such as political
and social criticism. This lecture will consider how these women harnessed their poetry to
talk about typically Romantic themes like nature, imagination, the role of the individual and
the poetic process. It will also show how they broadened their focus to engage with such
important issues as women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, and the French Revolution.
Required Reading
All texts available in Duncan Wu (ed), Romanticism: An Anthology (third edition)
(Blackwell, 2005).
 Mary Robinson, ‘A London Summer Morning’
 Charlotte Smith, ‘The Emigrants’, Dedication and Book 1
 Anna Laetitia Barbauld, ‘Epistle to William Wilberforce’
 Anna Laetitia Barbauld, ‘To Mr Coleridge’
 Helen Maria Williams, ‘The Bastille, A Vision’
Recommended Reading
Cox, Philip, Gender, Genre, and the Romantic Poets: An Introduction (Manchester
University Press, 1996)
Curran, Stuart, ‘Mary Robinson and the New Lyric’, Women’s Writing, vol.9, issue 1 (2002)
9-22
Favret, Mary, ‘Telling Tales About Genre: Poetry in the Romantic Novel’, Studies in the
Novel, vol.26, no.1 (Summer 1994), 153-172
Janowitz, Anne, Women Romantic Poets: Anna Barbauld and Mary Robinson (Northcote
House, 2004)
Rajan, Tilottama, and Julia Wright, eds, Romanticism, History, and the Possibilities of
Genre (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Weeks 5-8: Tragedy
Tragedy in Aristotle’s definition is: ‘the imitation of an action that is serious....with incidents
arousing pity and fear’. What is a serious action and how does it arouse both pity and
fear? Has tragic experience remained somehow essentially the same over the centuries or
does it alter according to cultural and historical context? Is tragedy gendered? Despite
suffering, can tragedy be viewed as a positive experience? Through an examination of
three plays from antiquity to the present we shall consider this most contested and argued
over genre.
Lecture 1 (Week 5): Tom Healy [Seminar: Euripides' Medea]
Violence often seems central to tragic experience. Can tragic violence also involve justice?
Can a perpetrator of violence remain heroic?
Required Reading
It is important to read a reliable translation of Medea. Two good ones are translations by:

Warner, Rex, trans., Medea, in Euripides I, The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed.
David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press, 1955) (and
much reprinted), or:

Morwood, James, trans., Euripides: Medea and other plays (Oxford World’s
Classics, 1998).
(My own preference is for the Warner translation but you will need to order it from e.g.
Amazon.)
Lecture 2 (Week 6): Tom Healy [Seminar: Henrik Ibsen's Doll's House]
Greek tragedy is a highly stylised art form, reflecting the place of theatre in Athenian
society. Does tragedy maintain its intensity when it moves to a more realistic, located
setting?
Required Reading
 Ibsen, Henrik, Doll’s House, in Four Major Plays, trans. James McFarlane and Jens
Arup (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008).
Week 7: Reading Week
During week 7 you should work on reading the texts that you will be studying in week 8.
Lecture 3 (Week 8): Tom Healy [Seminar: Kane's Blasted]
Can extreme violence nullify tragic experience? What is the relation of violence to gender?
Does Kane's weaving of the type of stylised symbolic drama of plays such as Medea with
the realistic modes reflected by Ibsen create a tragedy for the 21st century?
Required Reading
 Kane, Sarah, Blasted, in Sarah Kane: Complete Plays (Methuen Contemporary
Dramatists, 2001).
Further and Recommended Reading for Tragedy
Students should be acquainted with Aristotle’s Poetics. For those studying Critical
Approaches, you will already have encountered this in Vincent B. Leitch, et al., eds, The
Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd rev edn (Norton, 2010). For those wishing
for a separate edition you can purchase Poetics, ed. Malcolm Heath (Penguin, 1996), or
the Poetics is available in the collection Classical Literary Criticism, ed. D. A. Russell and
Michael Winterbottom (Oxford World’s Classics, 1998).
Eagleton, Terry, Sweet Violence: The Idea of The Tragic (Blackwell, 2002).
Goldhill, Simon, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Moi, Toril, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theatre, Philosophy (Oxford
University Press, 2006).
Saunders, Graham, About Kane (Faber and Faber, 2009).
Other theoretical/critical material is usefully assembled in John Drakakis and Naomi Conn
Liebler, eds, Tragedy (London: Longman, Longman Critical Reader, 1998).
Weeks 9-11: Film Noir
You must make sure to attend the screenings that are provided for this section of
the module. Your tutor will provide details of time and place.
In this section of the module you will explore genre as it is manifested in film noir. All the
required reading will be provided on Study Direct.
Lecture 1 (Week 9): [Seminar: Double Indemnity]
In this lecture we will discuss the murky origins of film noir and explore its status as genre,
style, or movement, and pay special attention to the role that gender—especially the
representation of the female (film noir’s femme fatale)—plays in blurring the boundaries
among these modes of categorisation.
Screening
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944).
Required Reading
 Johnston, Clare, ‘Double Indemnity’, in Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan
(London: British Film Institute, 1980), pp. 100-111.
 Place, Janey, ‘Women in film noir’, in Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan
(London: British Film Institute, 1980), pp. 35-67.
 Fay, Jennifer, and Justus Nieland, Film Noir: Hard-Boiled Modernity and the
Cultures of Globalization (Oxford: Routledge, 2010). Read: pp. 124-82.
 Buscombe, Edward, 'The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema’, Screen, 11:2
(March-April 1970), 33-45.
Recommended reading
Copjec, Joan (ed.) Shades of Noir: A Reader (London: Verso, 1993). Read Copjec’s
Introduction and Elizabeth Cowie’s ‘Film Noir and Women’, pp. 121-166.
Dimendberg, Edward, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2004)
Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 16:3 (Autumn 1975), 6-18.
Naremore, James, More Than Night: Film Noir and its Contexts (Berkeley: University of
California Press). Read pp. 9-39.
Lecture 2 (Week 10): [Seminar: In a Lonely Place]
In this lecture we will look at the relationship between melodrama and film noir, paying
close attention to the question of visual style, which is often emphasised in accounts of
both melodrama and film noir. As before, we will be considering the representation of
gender—of both masculinity and femininity—in the context of questions of style and
gender.
Screening
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950).
Required Reading
 Polan, Dana, In a Lonely Place (BFI Film Classics, 1994).
Lecture 3 (Week 11): [Seminar: Mulholland Drive]
This lecture explores the historical and aesthetic problem of ‘neo-noir’ and of the selfconscious reinvention of a genre over time. We will consider how later iterations of noir
seem to consolidate the generic consistency of noir. We will continue our consideration of
the tension between style and content as an ongoing problem of noir’s status as a genre.
Screening
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001).
Required Reading:
 McGowan, Todd, ‘Lost on Mulholland Drive: Navigating David Lynch’s Panegyric to
Hollywood’, Cinema Journal, 43:2 (Winter 2004), 67-89.
 Desser, David, ‘Global Noir: Genre Film in the Age of Transnationalism’, Film Genre
Reader III, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2003),
pp. 516-36.
Recommended Reading:
Martin, Richard, The Architecture of David Lynch (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Especially
pp.49-62.
Week 12: The Future of Genre: Katie Walter [Seminar: no new material is set for
preparation for this session]
This final lecture draws on material studied across the module to posit a set of questions to
be taken up in discussion in the seminar about the future of genre—will genre survive, and
it what forms? What is the importance of genre to art, to criticism, and to society? What are
the alternatives?