FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
AND LITERATURE
Lecture List, Guide and Timetable for Hilary Term 2016
The Lecture List, Guide and Timetable are available on the Faculty's WebLearn site at: https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/humdiv/engfac.
The site also includes the weekly 'What's on this Week' summary; further details (including downloadable posters) for graduate seminars; and
(wherever possible) handouts and notes from the lectures. Where the title of a seminar, lecture, or lecture series listed is marked with a footnote
number, further information pertaining to that event is available under the number within the 'Guide' section of this document on pp.6-20.
NOTICE: Non-members of the University may not attend university lectures (unless they are announced as open to the general public) without
payment of a fee, otherwise than by personal invitation of the lecturer concerned. Persons who are neither reading for a qualification of this
University nor otherwise exempt under special arrangements for certain categories of non-members, and who wish to attend lectures in any term,
should apply to the Fees Clerk, University Offices, Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JD, who will provide information on the fee required.
Senior visiting scholars from other universities who wish to attend lectures, seminars, or classes should normally approach the lecturer concerned
directly, and not the Fees Clerk.
Lectures begin on the first possible day after the beginning of Full Term (Sunday 17 January 2016) unless otherwise stated.
Lectures will begin five minutes after the hour and finish at five minutes before the next hour.
Subject
Lecturer
Time
Place
Professor Cannon
M. 5
Auditorium, Corpus Christi
College
Professor Simon
Armitage
Adam Phillips
Tu. 5.30
South Schools, Exam Schools
W. 4.30
Don Paterson
W. 6.30
Gisele Sapiro
Th. 5
The Pusey Room, Keble
College
The Pusey Room, Keble
College
Lecture Theatre 2
Ms Johnson
Prof Horobin
Prof Jones
Tu. 12
Tu. 2
Th. 9
Exeter College
South School, Exam Schools
Seminar Room K
Prof Mukherjee
Dr Bevis
Dr Clarkson
Dr Goulimari
Th. 10
Th. 12
Th. 2
F. 10
Seminar Room K
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Dr Perkins
Dr Leneghan
Prof Orchard
Dr Leneghan
Dr Atherton
Dr Lazikani
M. 10
Tu. 12
W. 9
W. 12
W. 12
F. 9
Seminar Room K
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Dr Bevis
Th. 12
Lecture Theatre 2
SPECIAL LECTURES
Bateson Lecture 2016:‘”Wyth her owen handys”: What
Women’s Writing Can Teach us about Langland and
Chaucer’ (week 4)
Professor of Poetry Lecture (week 7)
The Adam Phillips Seminar - The Poet's Essay
Seminar 4 (week 7)
Keble’s “Meet the Poet” series presents: A Reading by Don
Paterson (week 6)
McKenzie Lecture 2016: ‘Authorship in transnational
perspective’ (week 8)
PRELIMS
Paper 1 An Introduction to Language and Literature
Feminist Literary Theories (weeks 1-8)
Approaches to Literature (weeks 1-8)
Introduction to Postmodernism: Theories, Texts, Art, Film
(Weeks 1-4)
Big Ideas: Introduction to Critical Theory (weeks 4-7)
The Objects of Literature (weeks 1-4)
Close Reading (weeks 5-6)
Literary Theory from Plato to Postcolonialism (weeks 1-5)
Paper 2 Early Medieval Literature, 650-1350
The Identity of Post-Conquest Writing (weeks 1-4)
Old English Literature Circus (weeks 1-8)
Beowulf (weeks 1-6)
Commentary for Old English Set Texts (weeks 1-5)
The Battle of Maldon and Old English Literature (weeks 6-8)
Understanding the Self in Old and Middle English (weeks 14)
Paper 3 Literature in English, 1830-1910
The Objects of Literature (weeks 1-4)
1
Paper 4 Literature in English 1910-Present
The Culture Debate: Eliot to Orwell (weeks 1-4)
Postmodern Fiction (weeks 5-8)
Poetry Circus (weeks 1-7)
Modernist Literature and Visual Culture (weeks 1-6)
Poetry and Place (weeks 1-3)
The Poetry of W.B. Yeats (weeks 6-8)
Dr Hayes
Dr Hayes
Dr Johnston
Dr Beasley
Prof Stafford
Prof McDonald
M. 10
M. 10
M. 11
M. 12
M. 12
M. 12
Networks and Poetics in Post-war Avant-Garde Poetry
(weeks 3-5)
Irish Modernism (weeks 2-4)
Theories of Modernism (weeks 1-7)
Neglected Modernist Poets (weeks 1-3)
Feminist Literary Theories (weeks 1-8)
Modernist Writers and the First World War (weeks 1-7)
American Modernist Poetry (weeks 1-6)
Mr Molan
M. 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
History of the Book Room
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K (6&7)
History of the Book Room (8)
Seminar Room K
Dr Bennett
Dr Whitworth
Dr Whitworth
Ms Johnson
Dr McLoughlin
Dr Beasley & Dr
Stubbs
Prof Jones
M. 3
Tu. 10
Tu. 11
Tu. 12
W. 10
W. 11
Seminar Room K
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Exeter College
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Th. 9
Seminar Room K
Prof Mukherjee
Dr Eltis
Th. 10
Th. 10
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
Ms Johnson
Dr Bevis
Dr Mackay
Prof Lee
Eleanor Lybeck
Prof Boehmer and Dr
Kelly
Dr Dwan
Dr Dwan
Th. 11
Th. 12
Th. 12
Th. 12
F. 11
F. 12
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Room 6, Exam Schools
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
F. 12
F. 12
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
Dr Smyth
Th. 11
Seminar Room K
Dr Smyth
Th. 11
Seminar Room K
Dr Murray
M. 11
Seminar Room K
Dr Barr
Dr Dimmick
Dr Griffiths
Dr Ghosh
M. 12
Tu. 11
W. 10
W. 12
Seminar Room B
History of the Book Room
Seminar Room K
History of the Book Room
Dr H. L. Spencer
Th. 10
Seminar Room B
Dr Bellis
Dr McCann
Dr McCann
Dr Lazikani
Th. 10
Th. 3
Th. 3
F. 9
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
Dr Moore
Dr Zieman
Dr Zieman
Dr Moore
F. 10
F. 11
F. 11
F. 12
Seminar Room B
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room B
Introduction to Postmodernism: Theories, Texts, Art, Film
(weeks 1-4)
Big Ideas: Introduction to Critical Theory (weeks 4-7)
Modern Drama (weeks 1-3)
James Joyce (weeks 1-8)
The Objects of Literature (weeks 1-4)
The Post-War British Novel (weeks 1-8)
Virginia Woolf (weeks 2-4)
Joyce’s Elements (weeks 1-4)
Introduction to World Literature in the Twentieth and
Twenty-First Century (weeks 1-2)
‘The Old Country’: Three Irish Poets (weeks 2-4)
Orwell in Context (weeks 5-6)
FINAL HONOUR SCHOOL
Paper 1: Shakespeare
Authors, Readers, and Books in Early Modern England
(weeks 1-3)
Creativity and Early Modern Literature (weeks 4-6)
Paper 2:Literature in English 1350–1550
The Literary Landscape of Medieval Scotland 1100-1500
(weeks 6-8)
Approaches to Middle English Literature (weeks 1-6)
Imagined cities in late medieval literature (weeks 4-7)
Early Tudor Experiment (weeks 1-8)
Later Medieval Rhetoric and Poetics: Henryson, Dunbar and
Douglas (weeks 1-6)
The Pearl-Poet: Pearl, Sir Gawain, Patience, Cleanness
(weeks 1-8)
Writing History 1350-1550 (weeks 5-7)
Middle English Lyrics: Form and Function (weeks 1-4)
Langland and the Genre of Dream Vision (weeks 5-8)
Understanding the Self in Old and Middle English (weeks 14)
Medieval Drama (weeks 1-6)
Troilus and Criseyde Commentary (weeks 1-4)
William Langland’s Piers Plowman (weeks 5-8)
Medieval Romance (weeks 1-6)
Paper 3: Literature in English 1550–1660
2
Religion and literature: Reformation to Glorious Revolution
(weeks 1-8)
The Materiality of Texts (weeks 1-3)
Milton (weeks 1-8)
Authors, Readers, and Books in Early Modern England
(weeks 1-3)
Creativity and Early Modern Literature (weeks 4-6)
Prof McCullough
M. 9
Seminar Room K
Prof van Es
Dr Burrow
Dr Smyth
T. 11
W. 11
Th. 11
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Dr Smyth
Th. 11
Seminar Room K
Prof McCullough
Prof Womersley
Prof Womersley
Prof van Es
Prof Womersley
Dr Johnston
Dr Burrow
Dr Camilleri
Dr Brammall
Prof Williams
Prof Williams
M. 10
Tu. 10
Tu. 10
Tu. 11
Tu. 12
Tu. 2
W. 11
Th. 10
Th. 2
F. 10
F. 10
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
North School, Exam Schools
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room K
Dr Klevan
W. 10
History of the Book Room
Dr Perkins
Prof O’Donoghue
Dr Murray
M. 10
M. 10
M. 11
Seminar Room K
Turville-Petre Room
Seminar Room K
Prof Horobin
Dr Barr
Dr Dimmick
Dr Leneghan
Dr Griffiths
Dr H. L. Spencer
M. 11
M. 12
Tu. 11
Tu. 12
W. 10
Th. 10
Seminar Room B
Seminar Room B
History of the Book Room
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room B
Dr Bellis
Dr Perkins
Dr Lazikani
Th. 10
Th. 3
F. 9
Lecture Theatre 2
History of the Book Room
Seminar Room K
Dr Moore
Dr Zieman
Dr Zieman
Dr Moore
F. 10
F. 11
F. 11
F. 12
Seminar Room B
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room B
Prof McCullough
Dr Burrow
Dr Camilleri
Dr Brammall
M. 10
W. 11
Th. 10
Th. 2
Seminar Room K
Lecture Theatre 2
Lecture Theatre 2
Seminar Room K
Paper 4 English Literature 1660-1760
John Dryden’s Poetry (weeks 5-8)
Swift (weeks 1-4)
Gulliver’s Travels (weeks 5-8)
The Materiality of Text (weeks 1-3)
Defoe (weeks 1-8)
Paper 4 circus (week 1)
Milton (weeks 1-8)
Mock-Epic (weeks 1-4)
Translation and Literature in the Augustan Age (weeks 1-4)
Restoration Comedy (weeks 1-4)
Readers and Reading: Pope, Swift and the History of
Misunderstanding (weeks 5-8)
FHS General Courses
Evaluative Aesthetics and Criticism – 1 hour lecture & 1
hour class (weeks 1-5) (open to all without enrolment –
undergraduates and graduates)
COURSE II
The Identity of Post-Conquest Writing (weeks 1-4)
Old Norse for Improvers (weeks 1-8)
The Literary Landscape of Medieval Scotland 1100-1500
(weeks 6-8)
Standards of English (weeks 1-6)
Approaches to Middle English Literature (weeks 1-6)
Imagined cities in late medieval literature (weeks 4-7)
Old English Literature Circus (weeks 1-8)
Early Tudor Experiment (weeks 1-8)
The Pearl-Poet: Pearl, Sir Gawain, Patience, Cleanness
(weeks 1-8)
Writing History 1350-1550 (weeks 5-7)
Medieval Romance (weeks 1,3,5,7)
Understanding the Self in Old and Middle English (weeks 14)
Medieval Drama (weeks 1-6)
Toilus and Criseyde Commentary (weeks 1-4)
William Langland’s Piers Plowman (weeks 5-8)
Medieval Romance (weeks 1-6)
CLASSICS AND ENGLISH
CLASSICS AND ENGLISH Prelims – See FHS Course I,
Paper 3
CLASSICS AND ENGLISH FHS
John Dryden’s Poetry (weeks 5-8)
Milton (weeks 1-8)
Mock-Epic (weeks 1-4)
Translation and Literature in the Augustan Age (weeks 1-4)
3
HISTORY AND ENGLISH
Interdisciplinary classes for 1st years (weeks 2,4,6,8)
Dr Kewes
Tu. 5
TE Lawrence Room, Jesus
College (weeks 2,4, 6), week
8 location tbc
Old Norse for Improvers (weeks 1-8)
Old English for Beginners (weeks 1-8)
Evaluative Aesthetics and Criticism – 1 hour lecture & 1
hour class (weeks 1-5) (open to all without enrolment –
undergraduates and graduates)
Work-in-Progress Group on Manuscripts and Texts (weeks 2,
4, and 6)
20th/21st C. Graduate Research in Progress Seminar (weeks
1,3,5,7)
Science, Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Prof O’Donoghue
Prof Orchard
Dr Klevan
M. 10
Tu. 3
W. 10
Turville-Petre Room
Pembroke College
History of the Book Room
Prof Wakelin
W. 2
Seminar Room A
Roger Irwin &
Edward Dobson
Prof Shuttleworth
W. 5.15
Seminar Room B
W. 5.30
James Baldwin Reading Group (weeks 1-8)
Joshua Aiken, Donald
Brown and Tim
McGinnis
Nanette O’Brien
W. 5
Seminar room 3, St Anne’s
College
Rothermere American
Institute
F. 1
F. 5
History of the Book Room
Lecture Room 2, Tom Quad,
Staircase 8, Christ Church
Prof Gillespie and Dr
Barr
Prof Cameron
W. 11- 12.30
Seminar Room A
W. 10
Seminar Room B
The Identity of Post-Conquest Writing (weeks 1-4)
Textual Cultures 1700-1830 (weeks 1-6)
World Literature Book History (weeks 1-6)
Issues in Editing (weeks 1-6)
MSt 650-1550 B Course (weeks 1-6)
Dr Perkins
Prof Sutherland
Dr Kelly
Prof Sutherland
Prof Wakelin
M. 10
Tu. 10
Tu. 11
Tu. 2
Tu. W.& Th. 9
Seminar Room K
Seminar Room A
St Hugh’s College
Weston Library
History of the Book Room
MSt 1550-1700 B Course (weeks 1-6)
MSt 1830-1914 B Course (weeks 5-6)
Dr Smyth
Dr Tyler
W. 9.30
Th. 11
Weston Library
Seminar Room A
Prof Mukherjee
Prof Lee
Prof Orchard
Profs Reynolds,
Marcus and Kohl
Prof McCabe
Prof Cameron
Prof Horobin
Prof Boehmer
Profs Reynolds,
Marcus and Kohl
Dr Malkin
M. 11
Tu. 9.15
Tu. 10
Tu. 11
Wadham College
Wolfson College
Seminar Room B
Habakkuk Room, Jesus
College
Merton College
Seminar Room C
Magdalen College
Seminar Room B
TBC
GRADUATE COURSES
*Please note: Graduate classes are available to enrolled
students only. Unless otherwise specified*
General Courses
Teaching and Careers Seminars (weeks 2,3,4,6,8)
Historiography Research Seminar (weeks 3&6)
MSt A Courses
MSt 650-1550 A Course (weeks 1-6)
Topics in English Language: History, Structure and Use
(weeks 1-6)
MSt B Courses
MSt C Courses
The Humanitarian Novel
Life-Writing (weeks 1-6)
The Anglo-Saxon Riddle Tradition (weeks 1-6)
Comparative Criticism Group 1 (weeks 1-8)
Utopian Writing from More to Hume (weeks 1-6)
Sociolinguistics (weeks 1-6)
The History of Written English (weeks 1-6)
Literatures of Empire and Nation (weeks 1-6)
Comparative Criticism Group 2 (weeks 1-8)
American Fiction since 2000 (weeks 1-6)
4
W. 12
Th. 11
Th. 11
Th. 11
Th. 11
Th. 2
Seminar Room 1, RAI (weeks
1-5), week 6 venue tba
Sense of Humour from Wordsworth to Eliot
Early Medieval Devotional and Pastoral Literature
Dr Bevis
Dr Sutherland
Th. 2
F. 10
Pusey Room, Keble College
Somerville College
Dr Evangelista, Dr
Russell and Dr
Dickson
Prof Ballaster, Prof
Gerrard, Dr Johnston,
Dr Murphy, Dr Pohl,
Prof Williams
Prof Stafford
Dr Traub
M. 5.15
History of the Book Room
M. 5.15
Dorfman Room, St Peter’s
College
M. 5.30
Tu. 4
Natalie Ferris and
Daniel Matore
Prof Stern, Prof Smith
and Prof Lewis
Dr Hayes and Dr
McLoughlin
Tu. 5.15
Balliol College
Seminar Room B (week 1),
Seminar Room A (weeks
3,5,7)
Seminar Room A
Tu. 5.15
History of the Book Room
W. 5
Medieval English Research Seminar (weeks 1-8)
American Literature Research Seminar (weeks 1, 3, 5)
Prof Gillespie
Prof Mendelssohn
W. 5.15
Th. 5
Postcolonial Writing and Theory Seminar (weeks, 2, 4, 6, 8)
Prof Boehmer and
Prof Mukherjee
Prof Friend, Prof
Maguire, Laura Tradii
Th. 5.15
Harris Manchester College,
Old Dining Room (weeks 2,4
and 6) Tomáš Halík Room
(week 8)
History of the Book Room
Rothermere American
Institute
Wadham College
SEMINARS
Victorian Literature Graduate Seminar (weeks 2, 4, 6, 8)
Restoration to Reform (weeks 2, 4, 6, 8)
Romantic Research Seminar (weeks 1,3,5,7)
Post-1960 Literature, Culture, Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary
Debates (weeks 1, 3, 5, 7)
Literature and Visual Culture Seminar (weeks 1, 3, 5, 7)
Early Modern Literature Seminar (weeks 1, 3, 5, 7)
Modern Literature Graduate Seminar (weeks 2, 4, 6, 8)
Literature and Medicine (weeks 1, 3, 5, 6)
Th. 6.15
Green Templeton College, E
P Abraham Lecture Theatre
5
The Guide to the Lecture List, Hilary Term 2016
The Guide to the Lecture List includes additional detail, where available, about lectures contained in the Lecture List. Each numbered
entry corresponds to the superscripts attached to the relevant entries in the main List. It is also important that you read the emails
sent to you from the Faculty Office because they will notify you of any last minute alterations or cancellations or remind you of special
lectures. General examination information will also be sent to you via email.
PRELIMS
Paper 1 An Introduction to Language and Literature
Professor Horobin – Approaches to Literature
Tuesdays at 2pm, South School, Exam Schools (weeks 1-8)
1) What is Literature? - Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
2) Literature and History - Kate McLoughlin
3) Literature and Identity - Ankhi Mukherjee
4) Reading Poetry - Matthew Reynolds
5) Reading Narrative - Laura Marcus
6) Reading Drama and Performance - Sos Eltis
7) Character / Self / Other – Helen Small
8) Authority and Intentionality - Kantik Ghosh
Prof Jones – Introduction to Postmodernism: Theories, Texts, Art, Film
Thursdays at 9am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
1. Introduction: What is postmodernism? (Literary postmodernism: a period or a mode?)
2. Theories (inlcuding Marxist critiques, David Harvey, Ihab Hassan, and French responses -Jean-Francois Lyotard's postmodern sublime)
3. More theories: Jean Baudrillard on Los Angeles. Decentering space: the post-modern city, architecture, music, dance.
4. Feminism and Postmodernism.
Prof Mukherjee- Big Ideas: Introduction to Critical Theory
Thursdays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 4-7)
Big Ideas: Introduction to Critical Theory
Week 4: Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny"
Week 5: Michel Foucault, "Power/Knowledge"
Week 6: Judith Butler, "Gender"
Week 7: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Subaltern"
Dr Bevis- The Objects of Literature
Thursdays at 12pm, Lecture Theatre 2, (weeks 1-4)
This course starts with an absurdly broad question: what might writers be doing (or not doing) when they are describing things? The first
lecture will consider some ways of tackling this question by focusing on a range of writers (Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Beckett and others). The next
three lectures will take a specific object in turn to see what poets, novelists, theorists, historians, comedians, and other animals have made of
them—and to suggest how readers might re-make them. Examples will be taken mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so the
lectures should also be helpful to those working on Prelims Papers 3 and 4.
1. ‘To hell with all this fucking scenery’: Objects and objections
2. The funny thing about trees
3. Reading by the clock
4. One door after another
Dr Clarkson – Close Reading
Thursdays at 2pm, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 5-6)
‘All respectable poetry invites close reading’, said I. A. Richards. We might extend that comment to all respectable literature. But what exactly
is close reading? What makes for good close reading and bad close reading? What are its virtues and what are its limitations? These two
lectures will consider close reading in theory and in practice, engaging with those who have thought about close reading most influentially
(Richards, the New Critics, Eagleton, and so on) and performed it most impressively (Empson, Ricks, and so on). Happily, in order to talk
about close reading it will also be useful to do some.
6
Paper 2 Early Medieval Literature, 650-1350
Dr Perkins – The Identity of Post-Conquest Writing
Mondays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
These lectures will introduce some of the most important English texts from the period 1066–1350, and will locate them in the vibrant cultural
arena of Britain after the Norman Conquest, when different languages, genres and peoples were clashing and mingling in recently colonized
territory. The thread that links the lectures is, unsurprisingly, that of identity.
1. Who are the English? (Bayeux Tapestry; Hereward the Wake; Layamon’s Brut)
2. Talking Animals (The Owl and the Nightingale; bestiaries)
3. Inheritance (the Bible; lyrics; Ancrene Wisse)
4. Soul Searching (romances; Ancrene Wisse)
Dr Leneghan – Old English Literature Circus
Tuesdays at 12pm, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-8)
Old English Literature Circus:
This lecture circus will introduce students to a wide range of early English writing, from riddles and laments, to tales of heroes and saints,
covering the period from the conversion of the English to the twelfth century. It is principally aimed at Prelims Paper 2 (650-1350) but will
also be of interest to Course II students.
1. Mark Atherton: “Images of the Natural World”
Did Anglo-Saxon poets admire the natural world and its creatures? This lecture considers themes of creation, nature and otherworld in
passages from Beowulf, The Seafarer and the Riddles.
2. Hannah Bailey: “Old English Biblical Poetry”
This lecture is an introduction to the Junius MS and the Christ Poems of the Exeter Book, with emphasis on the many ways in which these
poems are far too complex to think of them as straightforward translations of the Bible for the benefit of people who don't read Latin.
3. Stefany Wragg: “Vernacular hagiography: so serious?”
This lecture will look at the entertainment value of Old English hagiography, including Juliana and The Life of Chad.
4. Daniel Thomas: “Structure and Narrative in Old English Verse”
This lecture examines the frameworks, structures, and patterns which Anglo-Saxon poets employed in constructing narrative poetry. It will
focus on a range of verse texts, including Judith and The Battle of Maldon.
5. Francis Leneghan: “How to Build a Beowulf”
This lecture will attempt to outline how the poem we now call Beowulf came into existence, considering its roots in folktale, myth, legend and
history.
6. Francis Leneghan: “Youth, Age and Royal History in Beowulf”
Tolkien famously asserted that Beowulf was concerned with the ‘rising and setting’ of the hero’s life. This lecture will argue that the poem is in
fact more concerned with the life-cycle of dynasties, in which the hero plays a pivotal role.
7. Helen Appleton: “Twelfth Century English Literature: 1”
These two lectures will explore the survival of ‘Old English’ literature in the twelfth century. The first lecture will focus on the post-Conquest
reception of the Anglo-Saxon past concentrating on texts such as Durham, Layamon, the Worcester Fragments and the Proverbs of Alfred.
8. Helen Appleton: “Twelfth Century English Literature: 2”
The lecture series ends, like all things, on a sombre note, with a focus on religious texts such as Soul and Body debates and The Grave.
Dr Francis Leneghan - Commentary for Old English Set Texts
Wednesdays at 12pm, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-5)
This lecture course, aimed at students taking Prelims Paper 2, focuses on the style of Old English verse.
1.Introduction to Old English poetic style
2.The Dream of the Rood
3.The Wanderer
4.Beowulf (the fight with Grendel)
5.The Battle of Maldon
Dr Lazikani –Understanding the Self in Old and Middle English
Fridays at 9am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
Lecture 5: Mental Illness in the Middle Ages I
7
Depression in anchoritic texts (Ancrene Wisse, Christina of Markyate, mention of Latin texts Aelred and Goscelin; post-natal depression the
Book of Margery Kempe). Drawing on Alexander Murray’s work on suicide in the Middle Ages.
Lecture 6: Mental Illness in the Middle Ages II
Eating disorders among anchorites as implied in Ancrene Wisse and The Book of Margery Kempe, with reference to broader European cultures:
Catherine of Siena, Angelina of Foligno, and Mary D’Oignies especially. Drawing on Rudolph Bell and Caroline Walker Bynum.
Lecture 7: Defamiliarization in hagiography
On the dynamic of affective engagement and disengagement in Middle English hagiography, focusing on the Katherine Group legends and the
South English Legendaries (the latter both in its pre-1300 and post-1300 form).
Lecture 8: Self and Other: Mother-child relationships
Looking at the Old English Martyrology (highlighting the importance of familial bonds in saints’ lives); Jesus as Mother in Ancrene Wisse, the
Wooing Group, and Julian of Norwich’s Revelations; and the dominance of mother-figures in romance, especially in Malory’s Morte Darthur.
Paper 3 Literature in English, 1830-1910
Dr Bevis- The Objects of Literature
Thursdays at 12pm, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-4)
This course starts with an absurdly broad question: what might writers be doing (or not doing) when they are describing things? The first
lecture will consider some ways of tackling this question by focusing on a range of writers (Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Beckett and others). The next
three lectures will take a specific object in turn to see what poets, novelists, theorists, historians, comedians, and other animals have made of
them—and to suggest how readers might re-make them. Examples will be taken mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so the
lectures should also be helpful to those working on Prelims Papers 3 and 4.
1. ‘To hell with all this fucking scenery’: Objects and objections
2. The funny thing about trees
3. Reading by the clock
4. One door after another
Paper 4 Literature in English 1910-Present
Dr Hayes- The Culture Debate: Eliot to Orwell
Mondays at 10am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-4)
These lectures will focus on the ways in which writers and intellectuals have used the concept of culture to reflect upon the experience of
modernity:
Week 1. The Concept of Culture: Ruskin, Eliot, Wells.
Week 2. D.H. Lawrence and Democracy
Week 3: Hellenism and its Discontents: Arnold, Forster, Woolf
Week 4: Culture, Socialism, and the Working Class: Marcuse, Caudwell, Orwell
Dr Hayes – Postmodern Fiction
Mondays at 10am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 5-8)
These Lectures will focus on the ways in which writers in the postwar period have experimented with the genre of the novel, particularly in
relation to ideas about history, subjectivity, and politics. Featured writers will include Samuel Becket, Roland Barthes, J.M Coetzee, Michael
Ondaatje, Jean-Francois Lyotard, John Berger, A.S Byatt, and Graham Swift, among others.
Dr Johnston – Poetry Circus
Mondays at 11am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-7)
Week 1. Prof. Abigail Williams – Miscellanies
Week 2. Dr Clare Bucknell – Georgic
Week 3. Prof. David Womersley – Burlesque
Week 4. Prof. Christine Gerrard – Labouring-Class Poetry
Week 5. Dr William Bowers – Philosophical Poetry
Week 6. Dr Oliver Clarkson – The Ode
Week 7. Prof. Fiona Stafford – Elegy
Dr Beasley – Modernist Literature and Visual Culture
Mondays at 12pm, History of the Book Room (weeks 1-6)
This series of lectures aims to provide a broader and interdisciplinary context for the study of major modernist literary texts by focusing on the
close relationship between the verbal and visual arts at the beginning of the twentieth century.
1. Introduction: modernism as a visual culture
2. Futurism (T.S Eliot, F.T Marinetti, Henri Bergson, Mina Loy)
3. Imagism and vorticism (Ezra Pound, H.D., Wyndham Lewis)
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4. Post-impressionism (Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant)
5. Cubism (Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso)
6. Cinema (Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Sergei Eisenstein)
Professor Stafford – Poetry and Place
Mondays at 12pm, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-5)
1. FS Local Attachments: Heaney and the Place of Poetry 2.PD Auden and Northern Britain: *Paid on Both Sides* and *The Orators* 3.FS
Belfast and Glasgow and modern poetry 4.PD The English North: Sean O'Brien; Helen Tookey; Simon Armitage 5. FS New Nature Writing
Mr Molan – Networks and Poetics in Post-war Avant-Garde Poetry
Mondays at 2pm, Seminar Room K (weeks 3-5)
This series will examine networks of writers operating outside the perceived mainstream of British poetry in the post-war period. As well as
examining the distinctive poetics of these imagined and actual communities of writers, the lectures will explore the ways in which these poets
directly shaped their groups through letters, reviews, essays and magazines.
1.
2.
3.
Angry Young Men: opposition to Movement poetics by Christopher Logue, Charles Tomlinson and others.
Concrete Poetry: British involvement in the international movement of visual poetry, including Ian Hamilton Finlay and dom
sylvester houedard.
The Cambridge School: late modernists, including J. H. Prynne and Veronica Forrest-Thomson.
Dr Bennett- Irish Modernism
Mondays at 3pm, Seminar Room K (weeks 2-4)
These lectures will consider the emergence of Irish modernism in the peculiar contexts of the Irish Literary Revival. Looking at the Revivalist
foundations of the modernism of writers such as Yeats and Joyce, assumed into a European modernist tradition, and the resistance to a
backward-looking Revivalism in modernist poetry of the thirties, this series examines the coincidence of the national and the international in
Irish modernist writing.
Week 1: Romanticism, Revivalism and Modernism: W. B. Yeats
Week 2: James Joyce, Flann O’Brien and Irish Modernist Prose
Week 3: Irish Poetry of the Thirties: Late Modernism and Anti-Antiquarianism
Dr Whitworth – Theories of Modernism
Tuesdays at 10am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-7)
This series aims to familiarise the audience with key ideas about modernism, and, where relevant, to consider the extent to which they
adequately describe key modernist texts. Lectures will cover:
(1) Modernism and Modernities
(2) Romanticism and Modernism
(3) Modernism and the Real
(4) Modernism, Subjectivity, and Individualism
(5) Modernism, the Masses, and the Culture Industry
(6) Modernism and Gender
(7) Modernism, Postmodernism, Late Modernism.
Dr Whitworth – Neglected Modernist Poets
Tuesdays at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-3)
This series offers introductions to poets of the early twentieth century for whom there is a relatively limited critical literature. The series will
also consider the formation of the modernist canon and the reasons for each poet’s neglect. It will cover: (1) Mina Loy; (2) Hugh MacDiarmid;
(3) Basil Bunting.
Dr McLoughlin- Modernist Writers and the First World War
Wednesdays at 10am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks1-7)
What, if any, impact did the First World War have on Modernism? Did those Modernists who were combatants react in the same way as those
who were not, and can these reactions be traced in their poetics? What effect did the conflict have on women writers? How can the First
World War be ‘positioned’ in a wider picture of Modernist movements? This lecture series will look in detail at a range of Modernist writers
to gauge the effect of the conflict on their stylistic and thematic concerns.
Week 1: Introduction to Thinking About (First World) War Writing, T. E. Hulme and Herbert Read; Week 2: Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington
& H.D.; Week 3: Ford Madox Ford; Week 4: David Jones; Week 5: T. S. Eliot; Week 6: Virginia Woolf; Week 7: D. H. Lawrence.
Dr Beasley and Dr Stubbs - American Modernist Poetry
Wednesdays at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-6)
This series of lectures will provide an introduction to the major poets, works and debates in American modernist poetry.
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1 T S Eliot (Dr Beasley)
2 Marianne Moore (Dr Stubbs)
3 Wallace Stevens (Dr Stubbs)
4 Ezra Pound (Dr Beasley)
5 William Carlos Williams (Dr Beasley)
6 Elizabeth Bishop (Dr Stubbs)
Prof Mukherjee- Big Ideas: Introduction to Critical Theory
Thursdays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 4-7)
Big Ideas: Introduction to Critical Theory
Week 4: Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny"
Week 5: Michel Foucault, "Power/Knowledge"
Week 6: Judith Butler, "Gender"
Week 7: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Subaltern"
Dr Bevis- The Objects of Literature
Thursdays at 12pm, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-4)
This course starts with an absurdly broad question: what might writers be doing (or not doing) when they are describing things? The first
lecture will consider some ways of tackling this question by focusing on a range of writers (Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Beckett and others). The next
three lectures will take a specific object in turn to see what poets, novelists, theorists, historians, comedians, and other animals have made of
them—and to suggest how readers might re-make them. Examples will be taken mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so the
lectures should also be helpful to those working on Prelims Papers 3 and 4.
1. ‘To hell with all this fucking scenery’: Objects and objections
2. The funny thing about trees
3. Reading by the clock
4. One door after another
Dr Mackay – The Post-War British Novel
Thursdays at 12, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-8)
This course of eight lectures surveys the British novel from the Second World War to the present. Proceeding decade by decade through the
past eighty years, we will be considering the literary significance and cultural engagements of major works by George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh,
Kingsley Amis, Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, John Fowles, Doris Lessing, J.G. Ballard, Irvine Welsh, James Kelman, Ian McEwan, Kazuo
Ishiguro, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, and Alan Hollinghurst.
Week 1: Writing the Ruins: 1945-1950
Week 2: The Post-War Settlement and the 1950s Novel
Week 3: Realism and Metafiction in the 1960s
Week 4: Decline, Dystopia, and Apocalypse: 1975-1990
Week 5: The Contemporary Scottish Novel
Week 6: The Englishness of the English Novel
Week 7: Millennial Retrospection and the Twenty-First-Century Novel
Week: 8: The Meaning of a Contemporary ‘Canon’
Professor Dame Hermione Lee - Virginia Woolf
Thursdays at 12pm, Room 6, Exam Schools (weeks 2-4)
1. "To pin down the moment": Virginia Woolf, time and memory
2. "We're trying something harder": Virginia Woolf, T.S.Eliot, and modernist experiments
3. "It is no use trying to sum people up": Virginia Woolf and Life-Writing.
Eleanor Lybeck – Joyce’s Elements
Fridays at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
This series will introduce students to key themes in Joyce’s major works by concentrating on the author’s representation of the four elements of
classical thought. It will consider these representations within the historical context of turn-of-the-century and twentieth century Ireland, while
paying equally keen attention to resonances with ancient myth and the experience of everyday life in modernity.
Three lectures will attend to the air of Dubliners, the fire of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the earthiness of Ulysses. The series
will end with a class devoted to close readings of watery scenes in Finnegans Wake, thereby introducing students to the pleasure that might be
divined from the challenges of that text.
Week I: Air
Week II: Fire
Week III: Earth
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Week IV: Water (Class)
Professor Dwan – ‘The Old Country’: Three Irish poets
Fridays at 12, Seminar Room K (weeks 2-4)
These lectures explore the meaning and role of Ireland and Irishness in the works of three, major poets: W. B. Yeats (lecture 1), Seamus
Heaney (lecture 2), Paul Muldoon (lecture 3).
Professor Dwan – Orwell in Context
Fridays at 12, Seminar Room K (weeks 5-6)
1)
2)
Orwell as a Political Thinker
Orwell’s views on happiness
Final Honour School
Paper 1: Shakespeare
Dr Smyth – Authors, Readers, and Books in Early Modern England
Thursday at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-3)
3 weeks on three fundamental categories: authors, readers, and books. What did these terms mean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
And how might a historicised sense of these terms help our reading of works by Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers?
Week 1. What was a book?
Week 2. What was an author?
Week 3. What was a reader?
Dr Smyth – Creativity and Early Modern Literature
Thursdays at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 4-6)
3 weeks on creativity in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. What models of creativity were available in early modern culture? How
did writers write? And how is our understanding of literary texts enriched if we have a sense of this writing culture?
Week 1. Invention and imitation.
Week 2. Writing technologies: commonplace books.
Week 3. Representing creativity: literature and art.
Paper 2: Literature in English 1350–1550
Dr Murray – The Literary Landscape of Medieval Scotland 1100-1500
Mondays at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 6-8)
Scotland’s Multilingual Literary Cultures. What were Scots reading in this period, and in which language? Who read these texts?
When, and how? We will look at some examples of the French and Latin of Scotland, as well as Older Scots works.
The Dream Vision in Scotland. How and why does the Scottish dream-vision form a distinctive tradition? We will consider a range of
writings, including chronicle and epic, as well as such celebrated dream-poems as the Kingis Quair of James I (1424) and Gavin Douglas’
Palice of Honour (1501).
The Romance in Scotland. How does Scotland treat romance narratives? What role do love and desire play in these works? Our principal
focus will be Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid (c.1480s) – a striking response to, and departure from, Chaucer’s Troilus. We will also briefly
explore some Scottish Arthur and Alexander romances, and touch upon the heroic epics, Barbour’s Bruce (c.1375) and Hary’s Wallace
(c.1470s).
Dr Barr – Approaches to Middle English Literature
Mondays at 12pm, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-3)
These lectures are a continuation of the lecture series in Michaelmas. We shall be introducing and developing critical approaches, ideas, and
topics to nourish reading Middle English Literature.
1. The Body Politic Dr Barr
2. Church Dr Varnam
3. Sacraments Dr Barr
4. Desire Dr Perkins
5. Emotion and cognition Dr Lazikani
6. History Dr Dimmick
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Dr Dimmick- Imagined cities in Late Medieval Literature
Tuesdays at 11am, History of the book Room (weeks 4-7)
From ancient Troy to the new Jerusalem, medieval writers use the real and imagined spaces of cities to create models of political community
and conflict, explore relations both commercial and spiritual, invent a history of civilization, examine the individual citizen and the world
empire. These four lectures each centre on a city of the imagination - some of them also cities that could be seen first-hand - as explored by a
variety of major and lesser-known Middle English writers, including Lydgate, Hoccleve, Chaucer, Kempe, Gower, Langland, the Pearl-poet,
Caxton, plus alliterative poems (inc. St Erkenwald, Wynnere and Wastoure, The Siege of Jerusalem), plays, pilgrim guides and romances.
They’re aimed primarily at the 1350-1550 period paper, but there will also be some material relevant to Course 2 Paper 2. The sequence will
run:
Week 1:
Troy
Week 2:
Rome
Week 3:
London
Week 4:
Jerusalem
Dr Griffiths- Early Tudor Experiment
Wednesdays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-8)
Contrary to popular belief, the early Tudor period was one of literary experimentation and innovation. Building on an emerging sense of
vernacular literary identity, but also responding to a variety of classical and continental literary influences, as well as to political, religious, and
technological change, many writers of the period not only experiment with form and genre, but address larger questions around the definition
of authorship, the status of the written word and the nature of the writing process. Focusing on authors including Skelton, Hawes, Douglas,
Wyatt, Surrey, and Baldwin, this series of lectures will explore how their thinking about the business of writing shapes their practice, and the
other way around.
Lecture 1: Skelton: Redefining Authorship
Lecture 2: Skelton: Rethinking Form
Lecture 3: Hawes: Rethinking Genre
Lecture 4: Douglas: Authorship and Translation
Lecture 5: Wyatt: Translating Form
Lecture 6: Surrey: Translating Meter
Lecture 7: Wyatt, Surrey, and Print
Lecture 8: Baldwin and Print
Dr Ghosh – Later Medieval Rhetoric and Poetics: Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas
Wednesdays at 12pm, History of the book Room (weeks 1-6)
This set of six lectures will look at aspects of late-medieval poetics, rhetoric and hermeneutics with reference to the works of Henryson,
Dunbar and Douglas, all post-Chaucerian and deeply self-conscious and sophisticated poetic practitioners writing in Older Scots. The focus
will be on literary-theoretical issues, but mediated via a close reading of these poets' reflections on the nature of poetic truth, on the (possible)
moral worth of what we would call aesthetic form and on the valence (and indeed feasibility) of claiming to be an "auctor" after Chaucer's
comprehensively sceptical dismantling of the category.
Dr Bellis – Writing History 1350-1550
Thursdays at 10am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 5-7)
This course will explore the vast and various body of historical writing across the period 1350-1550. It will introduce the chronicle tradition
(the Brut and its origins in the Arthurian/Galfridian tradition, John Trevisa and translation, the civic chronicles and their role in the power-play
of the Wars of the Roses), and discuss how the writing of history changed as it moved into print. It will think about the slippery categories of
fiction and history, romances that co-opted the historical mode and histories that courted a chivalric one (from Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight to Froissart to the Chandos Herald). It will also explore history’s function as a moral category and a mirror for princes, in Chaucer and
Lydgate’s works and the De Casibus tradition. It will discuss historical scepticism (from Henry of Newburgh to Polydore Vergil), and history’s
complex relationships with truth and myth. It will explore the material contexts of history, from rolls to chronicles to genealogical presentation
diagrams, and the function of written history as a visual/material testimony to power. This course investigates ways of conceptualising
‘history’ as a broad category of medieval writing in which important debates (about vernacularity and prestige, truth and fiction, nationality
and power, writing and ethics) were conducted.
Dr McCann –Middle English Lyrics: Form and Function
Thursdays at 3pm, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
This course will examine, over a series of four lectures, one of the most important forms of medieval writing: the Middle English lyric. Each
week the lecture will explore a specific type of Middle English lyric, providing broad historical contextualisation of its dominant themes and
preoccupations, and offering close textual analysis of key examples. The course will build upon students’ prior experience of medieval texts at
Prelims, expanding their knowledge of a key genre of writing.
Dr McCann – Langland and the Genre of Dream Vision
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Thursdays at 3pm, Seminar Room K (weeks 5-8)
This course will examine, over a series of four lectures, the important medieval genre of dream vision. Each week the lecture will explore
specific examples of the genre made by key authors and less canonical ones, providing broad historical contextualisation of the genre’s
dominant themes and preoccupations. Particular attention will be paid to that most demanding example of Middle English dream vision: Piers
Plowman. The course will build upon students’ prior experience of medieval texts at Prelims, expanding their knowledge of a key genre and
the contributions made to it by some of the most famous authors.
Dr Lazikani –Understanding the Self in Old and Middle English
Fridays at 9am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
Lecture 5: Mental Illness in the Middle Ages I
Depression in anchoritic texts (Ancrene Wisse, Christina of Markyate, mention of Latin texts Aelred and Goscelin; post-natal depression the
Book of Margery Kempe). Drawing on Alexander Murray’s work on suicide in the Middle Ages.
Lecture 6: Mental Illness in the Middle Ages II
Eating disorders among anchorites as implied in Ancrene Wisse and The Book of Margery Kempe, with reference to broader European cultures:
Catherine of Siena, Angelina of Foligno, and Mary D’Oignies especially. Drawing on Rudolph Bell and Caroline Walker Bynum.
Lecture 7: Defamiliarization in hagiography
On the dynamic of affective engagement and disengagement in Middle English hagiography, focusing on the Katherine Group legends and the
South English Legendaries (the latter both in its pre-1300 and post-1300 form).
Lecture 8: Self and Other: Mother-child relationships
Looking at the Old English Martyrology (highlighting the importance of familial bonds in saints’ lives); Jesus as Mother in Ancrene Wisse, the
Wooing Group, and Julian of Norwich’s Revelations; and the dominance of mother-figures in romance, especially in Malory’s Morte Darthur.
Dr Moore- Medieval Drama
Fridays at 10am, Seminar Room B (weeks 1-6)
I – Culture and Performance
II – Biblical History I: Analogy
III – Biblical History II: Playing
IV – Humanity and Divinity
V – Saint’s play, mumming and interlude
VI – Morality drama
Dr Zieman – Troilus and Criseyde Commentary
Fridays at 11am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-4)
This course will focus on aspects of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde with an eye towards commentary. It will not go through the poem
sequentially but will instead focus on a series of topics in form and style, tentatively the following:
1. What a 'Commentary Essay' is supposed to do; The Troilus and the question of sources
2. Aspects of voice and characterization
3. Narrative structure and narrative focalization
4. Prosody and rime royal
Dr Zieman – William Langland’s Piers Plowman
Fridays at 11am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 5-8)
This course will provide an introductory tour of William Langland's difficult but most excellent poem. It will give some account of its
complex composition before focusing primarily on the unfolding of the B-Text, with occasional references to C. The meaning of these
variously lettered 'texts' will be explained; indeed, no prior experience with the poem is expected: our job is to considers strategies for reading,
interpreting, and enjoying it.
1. So you want to read Piers Plowman?; The Prologue
2. Visions 1 and 2
3. Visions 3 and 4
4. Visions 5 and 6/7/8
Dr Moore- Medieval Romance
Fridays at 12pm, Seminar Room B (weeks 1-6)
I – Themes and Approaches. Covering topics such as genre, readership, and manuscript contexts.
II- Romance and History. Texts discussed include The Knight’s Tale and the Alliterative Morte Arthure.
III – The Marvellous. Focussing in particular on traditions arising out of the Breton lay and on The Squire’s Tale.
IV – Love and Lineage. Texts discussed include Floris and Blancheflour and Emaré.
V – Saints and Devils. (Sir Gowther, Emaré, Sir Isumbras)
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VI – ‘In Rome ther was an emperowre’ (Octavian, The Sege of Melayne)
Paper 3: Literature in English 1550–1660
Professor McCullough – Religion and Literature: Reformation to Glorious Revolution
Mondays at 9am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-8)
This 8-week course will survey fundamental aspects of religious change and their importance to English literary culture ca. 1559-1685.
Although grounded in the period covered by Paper 3, each lecture will also show how the protestant reformation that was supposedly ‘settled’
by Elizabeth in 1559 in fact continued to be highly contested, and literarily productive, not just under her and the early Stuarts, but also across
the Civil War period, and long after the restoration of the monarchy and established church in 1660. Authors and artists discussed will include
Cranmer, Spenser, Sidney, William Byrd, Nashe, Martin Marprelate, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne, Andrewes, Herbert, Herrick, Milton, Dryden,
Tate, Pepys, Defoe, and Watts.
Week 1: Reformation: from Catholic to Protestant
Week 2: Translating and Reading the Bible in English
Week 3: The Books of Common Prayer
Week 4: Psalm Translation, Religious Lyric, and Hymnody
Week 5: Puritanism, Anti-Puritanism, and Dissent
Week 6: From Predestination to Free Will
Week 7: Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism
Week 8: From Laudianism to Latitudinarianism
Dr Burrow- Milton
Wednesdays at 11am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-8)
The course will consider all aspects of Milton’s career, though the verse, and in particular Paradise Lost, will be its main focus. The first
lecture will be on Milton’s life and self-image, the second on Poems (1645) and subsequent lectures will address aspects of Paradise Lost
including such trivial topics as God, love, Satan and everything. The final lecture will suggest some good reasons for reading Paradise
Regained
Dr Smyth – Authors, Readers, and Books in Early Modern England
Thursday at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-3)
3 weeks on three fundamental categories: authors, readers, and books. What did these terms mean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
And how might a historicised sense of these terms help our reading of works by Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers?
Week 1. What was a book?
Week 2. What was an author?
Week 3. What was a reader?
Dr Smyth – Creativity and Early Modern Literature
Thursdays at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 4-6)
3 weeks on creativity in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. What models of creativity were available in early modern culture? How
did writers write? And how is our understanding of literary texts enriched if we have a sense of this writing culture?
Week 1. Invention and imitation.
Week 2. Writing technologies: commonplace books.
Week 3. Representing creativity: literature and art.
Paper 4 English Literature 1660-1760
Professor McCullough – John Dryden’s Poetry
Mondays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 5-8)
Dryden criticism has in recent years been dominated by a brilliant historicism, not least in situating Dryden and his works politically, as
epitomised in Paul Hammond’s magisterial Longman edition, and the prominence in Schools exams of Dryden’s political panegyrics and
satires. This course will ask why formal criticism of Dryden has, comparatively speaking, languished in recent decades, and consider Dryden’s
achievements in poetic form, aesthetics, and literary language in his shorter verse, including prologues and epilogues to plays, the ode, songs,
and poems on fellow artists.
Dr Johnston- Paper 4 Circus
Tuesday at 2pm, North School, Exam Schools (week 1)
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2pm
2.30pm
3pm
3.30pm
4pm
4.30pm
Clare Bucknell – 1660-1760: What is a Literary Period?
David Womersley – Whigs and Tories
Anna Camilleri – High and Low
Abigail Williams – Drama and the Theatre
Carly Watson – Manuscript and Print
Ros Ballaster – Literature and Gender
Dr Burrow- Milton
Wednesdays at 11am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-8)
The course will consider all aspects of Milton’s career, though the verse, and in particular Paradise Lost, will be its main focus. The first
lecture will be on Milton’s life and self-image, the second on Poems (1645) and subsequent lectures will address aspects of Paradise Lost
including such trivial topics as God, love, Satan and everything. The final lecture will suggest some good reasons for reading Paradise
Regained
Dr Camilleri- Mock-Epic
Thursdays at 10am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-4)
1: Ancient bottles, modern wine?
2: On Dryden’s rack.
3: Pope’s finest vintage.
4: The hangover.
This short lecture series will explore examples of mock-epic verse from the long eighteenth century. Beginning with a lecture on the origins of
the genre in an age steeped in epic, we will then consider the two most notorious pedlars of mock-epic: Dryden and Pope. The final lecture of
the series will look forward to later aficionados, including John Hookham Frere and Byron. Students may wish to note that the final lecture will
be of relevance to Paper 5.
Dr Brammall – Translation and Literature in the Augustan Age
Thursdays at 2pm, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
The age of Dryden and Pope is now generally regarded as the ‘Golden Age’ of poetic translation in English literary culture. Not only did the
number of translations from classical texts increase substantially, during this period several of the most important poets considered translating
classical texts the summit of their literary careers. This lecture series will consider the Augustan art of translation in both practice and theory.
As with the lecture series in Michaelmas, a special focus will be on how to read and write about translations, so you will be better equipped to
work on these texts in a variety of papers.
The lectures will be especially useful for students in joint schools, such as Classics and English (e.g., for the epic link paper) and English and
Modern Languages. However, as befits a series on translations, the lectures will also be accessible to all students who are interested in learning
about the classical and European contexts of English literature, but may not have the languages. The lecture series will build on the lectures in
Michaelmas, but it is not necessary to have attended in Michaelmas to follow the new series.
1. Translation and the Civil Wars
Key translators: Thomas May (Lucan); John Denham (Virgil); John Ogilby (Virgil); Richard Fanshawe (Horace); John Hall (Longinus);
2. Translation Theory and Its Applications
Key theorists and translators: Earl of Roscommon; William Soame and John Dryden (Boileau); John Dryden; Christopher Pitt (Vida);
3. Translating within a Tradition: John Dryden and the English Aeneids
Key translator: John Dryden (Lucretius, Ovid, Virgil, Chaucer);
4. The English Homers of Hobbes and Pope
Key translator: Thomas Hobbes (Homer); Alexander Pope (Homer).
FHS General Courses
Dr Klevan – Evaluative Aesthetics and Criticism
Wednesdays at 10, History of the Book Room (weeks 1-5)
This series will explain and explore the critical evaluation of art. Each week there will a lecture followed by a seminar discussing matters
arising. The series will be of interest to students – both undergraduate and graduate – studying philosophical aesthetics and to those studying
and practising criticism in the humanities. The series is oriented towards the aesthetic evaluation of film, but is devised to be relevant to other
arts (e.g. literature, fine art, music) and consists of philosophical and critical material of general applicability. It will divide into two main
sections and will concentrate on the following topics:
What is Evaluative Aesthetics?
1) The Origin and Definition of Aesthetics 2) Taste 3) Sensuous Immediacy 4) Singularity 5) Aesthetic Pleasure 6) Seeking Agreement 7)
Imagination 8) Adopting an Aesthetic Point of View 9) Aesthetic Experience 10) Aesthetic Appreciation 11) Form and Style 12) Aesthetic
Qualities
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What is Evaluative Criticism?
1) Defining Criticism 2) Evaluation and Appreciation 3) Understanding and Interpretation 4) Perception 5) Experience 6) Responsiveness and
Particularity 7) Description and Analysis 8) Close Reading 9) Comparison, Category and Context 10) Intention, Achievement and Skill 11)
Evaluative Criteria 12) Reasons, Arguments and Objectivity 13) Subjectivity, Contingency and the Relational
Final Honour School - COURSE II
Dr Perkins – The Identity of Post-Conquest Writing
Mondays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
These lectures will introduce some of the most important English texts from the period 1066–1350, and will locate them in the vibrant cultural
arena of Britain after the Norman Conquest, when different languages, genres and peoples were clashing and mingling in recently colonized
territory. The thread that links the lectures is, unsurprisingly, that of identity.
1. Who are the English? (Bayeux Tapestry; Hereward the Wake; Layamon’s Brut)
2. Talking Animals (The Owl and the Nightingale; bestiaries)
3. Inheritance (the Bible; lyrics; Ancrene Wisse)
4. Soul Searching (romances; Ancrene Wisse)
Dr Murray – The Literary Landscape of Medieval Scotland 1100-1500
Mondays at 11am, Seminar Room K (weeks 6-8)
Scotland’s Multilingual Literary Cultures. What were Scots reading in this period, and in which language? Who read these texts?
When, and how? We will look at some examples of the French and Latin of Scotland, as well as Older Scots works.
The Dream Vision in Scotland. How and why does the Scottish dream-vision form a distinctive tradition? We will consider a range of
writings, including chronicle and epic, as well as such celebrated dream-poems as the Kingis Quair of James I (1424) and Gavin Douglas’
Palice of Honour (1501).
The Romance in Scotland. How does Scotland treat romance narratives? What role do love and desire play in these works? Our principal
focus will be Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid (c.1480s) – a striking response to, and departure from, Chaucer’s Troilus. We will also briefly
explore some Scottish Arthur and Alexander romances, and touch upon the heroic epics, Barbour’s Bruce (c.1375) and Hary’s Wallace
(c.1470s).
Dr Dimmick- Imagined cities in Late Medieval Literature
Mondays at 10am, Turville-Petre Room (weeks 1-8)
From ancient Troy to the new Jerusalem, medieval writers use the real and imagined spaces of cities to create models of political community
and conflict, explore relations both commercial and spiritual, invent a history of civilization, examine the individual citizen and the world
empire. These four lectures each centre on a city of the imagination - some of them also cities that could be seen first-hand - as explored by a
variety of major and lesser-known Middle English writers, including Lydgate, Hoccleve, Chaucer, Kempe, Gower, Langland, the Pearl-poet,
Caxton, plus alliterative poems (inc. St Erkenwald, Wynnere and Wastoure, The Siege of Jerusalem), plays, pilgrim guides and romances.
They’re aimed primarily at the 1350-1550 period paper, but there will also be some material relevant to Course 2 Paper 2. The sequence will
run:
Week 1:
Troy
Week 2:
Rome
Week 3:
London
Week 4:
Jerusalem
Dr Leneghan – Old English Literature Circus
Tuesdays at 12pm, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-8)
Old English Literature Circus:
This lecture circus will introduce students to a wide range of early English writing, from riddles and laments, to tales of heroes and saints,
covering the period from the conversion of the English to the twelfth century. It is principally aimed at Prelims Paper 2 (650-1350) but will
also be of interest to Course II students.
1. Mark Atherton: “Images of the Natural World”
Did Anglo-Saxon poets admire the natural world and its creatures? This lecture considers themes of creation, nature and otherworld in
passages from Beowulf, The Seafarer and the Riddles.
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2. Hannah Bailey: “Old English Biblical Poetry”
This lecture is an introduction to the Junius MS and the Christ Poems of the Exeter Book, with emphasis on the many ways in which these
poems are far too complex to think of them as straightforward translations of the Bible for the benefit of people who don't read Latin.
3. Stefany Wragg: “Vernacular hagiography: so serious?”
This lecture will look at the entertainment value of Old English hagiography, including Juliana and The Life of Chad.
4. Daniel Thomas: “Structure and Narrative in Old English Verse”
This lecture examines the frameworks, structures, and patterns which Anglo-Saxon poets employed in constructing narrative poetry. It will
focus on a range of verse texts, including Judith and The Battle of Maldon.
5. Francis Leneghan: “How to Build a Beowulf”
This lecture will attempt to outline how the poem we now call Beowulf came into existence, considering its roots in folktale, myth, legend and
history.
6. Francis Leneghan: “Youth, Age and Royal History in Beowulf”
Tolkien famously asserted that Beowulf was concerned with the ‘rising and setting’ of the hero’s life. This lecture will argue that the poem is in
fact more concerned with the life-cycle of dynasties, in which the hero plays a pivotal role.
7. Helen Appleton: “Twelfth Century English Literature: 1”
These two lectures will explore the survival of ‘Old English’ literature in the twelfth century. The first lecture will focus on the post-Conquest
reception of the Anglo-Saxon past concentrating on texts such as Durham, Layamon, the Worcester Fragments and the Proverbs of Alfred.
8. Helen Appleton: “Twelfth Century English Literature: 2”
The lecture series ends, like all things, on a sombre note, with a focus on religious texts such as Soul and Body debates and The Grave.
Dr Griffiths- Early Tudor Experiment
Wednesdays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-8)
Contrary to popular belief, the early Tudor period was one of literary experimentation and innovation. Building on an emerging sense of
vernacular literary identity, but also responding to a variety of classical and continental literary influences, as well as to political, religious, and
technological change, many writers of the period not only experiment with form and genre, but address larger questions around the definition
of authorship, the status of the written word and the nature of the writing process. Focusing on authors including Skelton, Hawes, Douglas,
Wyatt, Surrey, and Baldwin, this series of lectures will explore how their thinking about the business of writing shapes their practice, and the
other way around.
Lecture 1: Skelton: Redefining Authorship
Lecture 2: Skelton: Rethinking Form
Lecture 3: Hawes: Rethinking Genre
Lecture 4: Douglas: Authorship and Translation
Lecture 5: Wyatt: Translating Form
Lecture 6: Surrey: Translating Meter
Lecture 7: Wyatt, Surrey, and Print
Lecture 8: Baldwin and Print
Dr Bellis – Writing History 1350-1550
Thursdays at 10am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 5-7)
This course will explore the vast and various body of historical writing across the period 1350-1550. It will introduce the chronicle tradition
(the Brut and its origins in the Arthurian/Galfridian tradition, John Trevisa and translation, the civic chronicles and their role in the power-play
of the Wars of the Roses), and discuss how the writing of history changed as it moved into print. It will think about the slippery categories of
fiction and history, romances that co-opted the historical mode and histories that courted a chivalric one (from Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight to Froissart to the Chandos Herald). It will also explore history’s function as a moral category and a mirror for princes, in Chaucer and
Lydgate’s works and the De Casibus tradition. It will discuss historical scepticism (from Henry of Newburgh to Polydore Vergil), and history’s
complex relationships with truth and myth. It will explore the material contexts of history, from rolls to chronicles to genealogical presentation
diagrams, and the function of written history as a visual/material testimony to power. This course investigates ways of conceptualising
‘history’ as a broad category of medieval writing in which important debates (about vernacularity and prestige, truth and fiction, nationality
and power, writing and ethics) were conducted.
Dr Perkins – Medieval Romance
Thursdays at 3pm, History of the Book Room (weeks 1, 3, 5 and 7)
These classes will address the comparative scope of the paper by introducing students to a variety of romances from different periods, places,
and in different languages (using translations). Reading will be sent beforehand, and all Course II students are expected to attend. These classes
are for second-year Course II students only.
week 1 Continental French and Anglo-Norman romance (Dr Reeve)
week 3 Old Norse romance (Dr Grønlie)
week 5 Welsh romance (Dr Williams)
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week 7 Late-medieval romance (Dr Moore)
Dr Lazikani –Understanding the Self in Old and Middle English
Fridays at 9am, Seminar Room k (weeks 1-4)
Lecture 5: Mental Illness in the Middle Ages I
Depression in anchoritic texts (Ancrene Wisse, Christina of Markyate, mention of Latin texts Aelred and Goscelin; post-natal depression the
Book of Margery Kempe). Drawing on Alexander Murray’s work on suicide in the Middle Ages.
Lecture 6: Mental Illness in the Middle Ages II
Eating disorders among anchorites as implied in Ancrene Wisse and The Book of Margery Kempe, with reference to broader European cultures:
Catherine of Siena, Angelina of Foligno, and Mary D’Oignies especially. Drawing on Rudolph Bell and Caroline Walker Bynum.
Lecture 7: Defamiliarization in hagiography
On the dynamic of affective engagement and disengagement in Middle English hagiography, focusing on the Katherine Group legends and the
South English Legendaries (the latter both in its pre-1300 and post-1300 form).
Lecture 8: Self and Other: Mother-child relationships
Looking at the Old English Martyrology (highlighting the importance of familial bonds in saints’ lives); Jesus as Mother in Ancrene Wisse, the
Wooing Group, and Julian of Norwich’s Revelations; and the dominance of mother-figures in romance, especially in Malory’s Morte Darthur.
Dr Moore- Medieval Drama
Fridays at 10am, Seminar Room B (weeks 1-6)
I – Culture and Performance
II – Biblical History I: Analogy
III – Biblical History II: Playing
IV – Humanity and Divinity
V – Saint’s play, mumming and interlude
VI – Morality drama
Dr Zieman – Troilus and Criseyde Commentary
Fridays at 11am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-4)
This course will focus on aspects of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde with an eye towards commentary. It will not go through the poem
sequentially but will instead focus on a series of topics in form and style, tentatively the following:
1. What a 'Commentary Essay' is supposed to do; The Troilus and the question of sources
2. Aspects of voice and characterization
3. Narrative structure and narrative focalization
4. Prosody and rime royal
Dr Zieman – William Langland’s Piers Plowman
Fridays at 11am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 5-8)
This course will provide an introductory tour of William Langland's difficult but most excellent poem. It will give some account of its
complex composition before focusing primarily on the unfolding of the B-Text, with occasional references to C. The meaning of these
variously lettered 'texts' will be explained; indeed, no prior experience with the poem is expected: our job is to considers strategies for reading,
interpreting, and enjoying it.
1. So you want to read Piers Plowman?; The Prologue
2. Visions 1 and 2
3. Visions 3 and 4
4. Visions 5 and 6/7/8
Dr Moore- Medieval Romance
Fridays at 12pm, Seminar Room B (weeks 1-6)
I – Themes and Approaches. Covering topics such as genre, readership, and manuscript contexts.
II- Romance and History. Texts discussed include The Knight’s Tale and the Alliterative Morte Arthure.
III – The Marvellous. Focussing in particular on traditions arising out of the Breton lay and on The Squire’s Tale.
IV – Love and Lineage. Texts discussed include Floris and Blancheflour and Emaré.
V – Saints and Devils. (Sir Gowther, Emaré, Sir Isumbras)
VI – ‘In Rome ther was an emperowre’ (Octavian, The Sege of Melayne)
Classics and English
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Professor McCullough – John Dryden’s Poetry
Mondays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 5-8)
Dryden criticism has in recent years been dominated by a brilliant historicism, not least in situating Dryden and his works politically, as
epitomised in Paul Hammond’s magisterial Longman edition, and the prominence in Schools exams of Dryden’s political panegyrics and
satires. This course will ask why formal criticism of Dryden has, comparatively speaking, languished in recent decades, and consider Dryden’s
achievements in poetic form, aesthetics, and literary language in his shorter verse, including prologues and epilogues to plays, the ode, songs,
and poems on fellow artists.
Dr Burrow- Milton
Wednesdays at 11am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-8)
The course will consider all aspects of Milton’s career, though the verse, and in particular Paradise Lost, will be its main focus. The first
lecture will be on Milton’s life and self-image, the second on Poems (1645) and subsequent lectures will address aspects of Paradise Lost
including such trivial topics as God, love, Satan and everything. The final lecture will suggest some good reasons for reading Paradise
Regained
Dr Camilleri- Mock-Epic
Thursdays at 10am, Lecture Theatre 2 (weeks 1-4)
1: Ancient bottles, modern wine?
2: On Dryden’s rack.
3: Pope’s finest vintage.
4: The hangover.
This short lecture series will explore examples of mock-epic verse from the long eighteenth century. Beginning with a lecture on the origins of
the genre in an age steeped in epic, we will then consider the two most notorious pedlars of mock-epic: Dryden and Pope. The final lecture of
the series will look forward to later aficionados, including John Hookham Frere and Byron. Students may wish to note that the final lecture will
be of relevance to Paper 5.
Dr Brammall – Translation and Literature in the Augustan Age
Thursdays at 2pm, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
The age of Dryden and Pope is now generally regarded as the ‘Golden Age’ of poetic translation in English literary culture. Not only did the
number of translations from classical texts increase substantially, during this period several of the most important poets considered translating
classical texts the summit of their literary careers. This lecture series will consider the Augustan art of translation in both practice and theory.
As with the lecture series in Michaelmas, a special focus will be on how to read and write about translations, so you will be better equipped to
work on these texts in a variety of papers.
The lectures will be especially useful for students in joint schools, such as Classics and English (e.g., for the epic link paper) and English and
Modern Languages. However, as befits a series on translations, the lectures will also be accessible to all students who are interested in learning
about the classical and European contexts of English literature, but may not have the languages. The lecture series will build on the lectures in
Michaelmas, but it is not necessary to have attended in Michaelmas to follow the new series.
1. Translation and the Civil Wars
Key translators: Thomas May (Lucan); John Denham (Virgil); John Ogilby (Virgil); Richard Fanshawe (Horace); John Hall (Longinus);
2. Translation Theory and Its Applications
Key theorists and translators: Earl of Roscommon; William Soame and John Dryden (Boileau); John Dryden; Christopher Pitt (Vida);
3. Translating within a Tradition: John Dryden and the English Aeneids
Key translator: John Dryden (Lucretius, Ovid, Virgil, Chaucer);
4. The English Homers of Hobbes and Pope
Key translator: Thomas Hobbes (Homer); Alexander Pope (Homer).
Graduate Courses
General Courses
Dr Klevan – Evaluative Aesthetics and Criticism
Wednesdays at 10, History of the Book Room (weeks 1-5)
This series will explain and explore the critical evaluation of art. Each week there will a lecture followed by a seminar discussing matters
arising. The series will be of interest to students – both undergraduate and graduate – studying philosophical aesthetics and to those studying
and practising criticism in the humanities. The series is oriented towards the aesthetic evaluation of film, but is devised to be relevant to other
arts (e.g. literature, fine art, music) and consists of philosophical and critical material of general applicability. It will divide into two main
sections and will concentrate on the following topics:
What is Evaluative Aesthetics?
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1) The Origin and Definition of Aesthetics 2) Taste 3) Sensuous Immediacy 4) Singularity 5) Aesthetic Pleasure 6) Seeking Agreement 7)
Imagination 8) Adopting an Aesthetic Point of View 9) Aesthetic Experience 10) Aesthetic Appreciation 11) Form and Style 12) Aesthetic
Qualities
What is Evaluative Criticism?
1) Defining Criticism 2) Evaluation and Appreciation 3) Understanding and Interpretation 4) Perception 5) Experience 6) Responsiveness and
Particularity 7) Description and Analysis 8) Close Reading 9) Comparison, Category and Context 10) Intention, Achievement and Skill 11)
Evaluative Criteria 12) Reasons, Arguments and Objectivity 13) Subjectivity, Contingency and the Relational
Professor Wakelin- Work-in-Progress Group on Manuscripts and Texts
Wednesdays at 2, Seminar Room A (weeks 2, 4 and 6)
This is a work-in-progress group for people doing research on the history of the book and textual transmission in the Middle Ages. People
wanting to be on the mailing list should email Prof. Wakelin on daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.
MSt B Courses
Dr Perkins – The Identity of Post-Conquest Writing
Mondays at 10am, Seminar Room K (weeks 1-4)
These lectures will introduce some of the most important English texts from the period 1066–1350, and will locate them in the vibrant cultural
arena of Britain after the Norman Conquest, when different languages, genres and peoples were clashing and mingling in recently colonized
territory. The thread that links the lectures is, unsurprisingly, that of identity.
1. Who are the English? (Bayeux Tapestry; Hereward the Wake; Layamon’s Brut)
2. Talking Animals (The Owl and the Nightingale; bestiaries)
3. Inheritance (the Bible; lyrics; Ancrene Wisse)
4. Soul Searching (romances; Ancrene Wisse)
Professor Wakelin- MSt 650- 1550 B Course
Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9am, History of the Book Room (weeks 1-6)
These lectures introduce the history of the book, codicology, palaeography and transcription of vernacular books, for the B Course of the MSt
in English 650- 1550, the MSt in medieval studies and the MPhil in Medieval English.
MSt C Courses
Prof Matthew Reynolds, Prof Laura Marcus, Prof Katrin Kohl and others - Comparative Criticism
Group 1: Tuesdays 11 am – 1 pm, Jesus College, Habakkuk Room (weeks 1-8)
Group 2: Thursdays 11 am – 1 pm, Venue tbc (weeks 1-8)
This course offers an opportunity for M.St. students from a range of humanities faculties to acquire a foundation in researching across
languages and/or media. It is open to students from the Faculties of Classics, English, Medieval and Modern Languages, Music and Oriental
Studies, and it will be team-taught by academics from those Faculties. Each seminar will focus on a topic that is central to comparative critical
research and there will be ample room for you to present and receive responses to your own work. Seminars:
1: National literatures – World literature?
2: Intermediality and Performance
3: The Ancients and the Moderns – the Role of the Canon
4: Genre
5: Translation, Adaptation, Version
6: Place and Displacement
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