Undergraduate

Reading and studying literature

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• What you will study
• Entry
• If you have a disability or additional requirement
• Study materials
• Teaching and assessment
• Students also studied
• Future availability

Reading and studying literature builds on the introductory courses in arts and humanities, The arts past and present (AA100), Voices and texts (A150) and Making sense of things: an introduction to material culture (A151). It will introduce you to the study of English literature by looking at a selection of texts from the Renaissance to the present day. The course offers a stimulating mix of classic texts and less well-known works from a range of genres, including drama, poetry and prose fiction as well as autobiography, travel-writing and film. An overarching concern of the course is the uses we make in the present of the literature of the past.

Course facts

Register for the course

This course is available for study in the countries shown. Fees and financial support may vary by country.

What you will study

This course will introduce you to the major literary periods and genres through the three books described below. You will learn how to read and study plays, poems and prose fiction written in different historical periods by a range of authors. You will also learn the basics of studying film. The discussion in the books is supported by extensive audio-visual resources, including studies of film versions of several of the set texts and interviews with prominent academic specialists.

The skills and subjects taught in this course have a value which extends beyond academic study, though the course also provides a solid foundation for advanced study of English literature and other subject areas.

Book 1: The Renaissance and the Long Eighteenth Century

Part 1 of this book, Love and Death in the Renaissance, deals with a literary period still famous for its experiments in the writing of tragic drama. We study two well-known examples written in the early years of the seventeenth century, William Shakespeare’s Othello and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Both plays are about marriages for love that violate social norms and are subsequently punished. We consider how the two dramatists depict these forbidden marriages and the ways in which they invest them with tragic meaning. We focus on the two themes of love and death, but we also explore other related themes of the plays, such as race and class. This first part is designed to hone your skills of textual analysis; it will also enable you to begin thinking about plays as texts written for performance.

The end of the seventeenth century witnessed the establishment of European colonies across the globe, an expansion of European power that was accompanied by a massive growth of interest in travel writing. In Part 2, entitled Journeys in the Long Eighteenth Century, we look at a number of such travel narratives, fictional and non-fictional, written between the 1680s and the 1790s. We begin with  Aphra Behn’s fascinating early novel, Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave, about an African prince tricked into slavery, and then move on to the French writer Voltaire’s satirical tale, Candide, which uses its hero’s journeys within and beyond Europe to interrogate the claim that we live in ‘the best of all possible worlds’. In addition to these two fictional accounts of journeys, we explore the autobiography of an ex-slave as well as the accounts of the famous mutiny on board the Bounty produced by Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian. Part 2 will also consider how reading these texts in relation to their contexts helps us to understand them more fully.

Book 2: Romantics and Victorians

The first part of Book 2, Romantic Lives, looks at a selection of texts, both English and continental, from the romantic period. This was a literary period in which much writing displayed a new and growing interest in the inner imaginative life of the individual. It was also the period when many still prominent ideas about what it means to be an author – our association of writing with the gifted, inspired individual – were first developed. This part of the course begins by looking at the portrayal of the inner life and the nature and function of the author in poems by William Wordsworth, best known for his relationship to the Lake District, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, often thought of as the quintessential romantic poet. It then examines the dark side of the romantic inner life by studying an autobiographical text, The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, by the drug-dependent journalist Thomas de Quincey, and an eerie short story about obsession by E.T.A. Hoffman.

By the time Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, the British Empire spanned the globe. In Part 2, Home and Abroad in the Victorian Age, we study representations of home (in both the domestic and the national senses of the word) and abroad in this age of empire. Part 2 starts with Emily Bronte’s famous novel Wuthering Heights, which is followed by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story The Sign of Four and Robert Louis Stevenson’s South Pacific tale, The Beach of Falesá. Each of these texts offers compelling and complex depictions of the relationship between the homely and foreign, the familiar and the strange. Part 2 also encourages you to think about the role of the reader in the creation of a literary text’s meaning.

Book 3: The Twentieth Century

Cities have been a favourite literary theme for centuries, but they play a particularly prominent role in writing and art from the first half of the twentieth century, as writers and artists reflected on the nature of life in an increasingly urbanized environment.

The first part of Book 3, Twentieth-Century Cities, looks at a selection of representations of the city from 1900–1950: James Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners; Fritz Lang’s cinematic masterpiece Metropolis; and a selection of poems and prose about New York from the 1920s to 1950 by writers such as Langston Hughes and Jack Kerouac. In addition to studying the depiction of the city in these works, Twentieth-Century Cities examines the concept of literary periods, considering whether there are weaknesses as well as strengths in the practice of classifying literary texts according to period.

Part 2, Migration and Memory, examines texts from the second half of the twentieth century which reflect on the experience of migration undergone by people displaced by war or emigrating in search of a better life. We study Sam Selvon’s novel about Caribbean migrants’ experience of London in the 1950s, The Lonely Londoners; a collection of poems, Questions of Travel, by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop, herself something of a nomad; Brian Friel’s play about life in rural Ireland in the 1930s, Dancing at Lughnasa; and W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants, an intriguing work that is usually called a novel but borrows freely from numerous other genres, including history and the memoir. This part of the course considers the depiction of migration in these texts and also their treatment of memory as a vital part of the migrant’s experience. We conclude the course by using this diverse selection of late twentieth-century texts as a basis for examining the question of what the word ‘literature’ means today.

You will learn

In addition to exploring the texts and topics detailed above, as you progress through the course you will develop skills of close reading and analysis as well as the ability to think logically and express yourself clearly. You will also increase your proficiency in IT. These are skills highly valued by employers in all sectors.

Entry

This is a Level 2 course and builds on the Level 1 courses The arts past and present (AA100), Voices and texts (A150) and Making sense of things: an introduction to material culture (A151). These Level 1 courses develop skills such as logical thinking, clear expression, essay writing and the ability to select and interpret relevant materials. They also offer an introduction to a range of subjects in the arts and humanities.

If you have not studied at university level before, you are strongly advised to study at Level 1 before progressing to Level 2 study.

Your regional or national centre will be able to tell you where you can see reference copies of Level 1 study materials, or you can buy selected materials from Open University Worldwide Ltd.

If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.

Preparatory work

No preparatory work is necessary but if you would like to do some reading in advance, you might start by tackling the two plays with which the course starts, Shakespeare’s Othello and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi.

If you have a disability or additional requirement

Block 5 of the course includes the study of the DVD of Fritz Lang’s silent film Metropolis. Students with a visual impairment will find this text challenging. However, fulfilment of the course’s learning outcomes and assessment will not be dependent on study of this text as it will be possible to focus on alternative texts in Block 5.

Elements of the course are delivered through a website and include the use of interactive online exercises. If you use specialist hardware or software to assist you in operating a computer or the internet and have any concerns about accessing this type of material you are advised to talk to you the Student Registration & Enquiry Service about support which can be given to meet your needs.

Written transcripts of any audio components and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of printed material are available. Some Adobe PDF components may not be available or fully accessible using a screen reader and musical notation and mathematical, scientific, and foreign language materials may be particularly difficult to read in this way. Other alternative formats of the course materials may be available in the future. Our Services for disabled students website has the latest information about availability.

If you are a new student, or new to courses using a computer or the internet, you will need to inform us of your particular needs as soon as possible, as some of our support services may take several weeks to arrange. Details of how to do this and our range of support services are described in our publication Meeting Your Needs.

You can also find information about accessible study materials, financial support and the Disabled Students' Allowance, equipment and other services, on our Services for disabled students website. It also includes our contact details for advice and support both before you register and while you are studying.

Study materials

What's included

Three books (as described above), additional literary texts, audio CDs, a DVD, website containing course guide, study planner, study guide, assessment materials, online exercises, audio and visual recordings and electronic versions of the three books.

You will need

The ability to play DVDs and CDs.

Computing requirements

This course includes online computer activities – you can access these using a web browser that can play Flash and Shockwave.

You will need internet access and a computer. If you have purchased a new computer since 2005 it should meet your course computing requirements. Check our Technical Requirements section if your computer is older than this or is otherwise unusual.

Teaching and assessment

Support from your tutor

You will have a tutor who will help you with the study material and who will mark and comment on your written work. Your tutor will use a blend of methods that will include face-to-face tutorials and moderated online discussion forums.

Contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service if you want to know more about study with The Open University before you register.

Assessment

The assessment details for this course can be found in the facts box above.

You will be expected to submit your tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) online through the eTMA system unless there are some difficulties which prevent you from doing so. In these circumstances, you must negotiate with your tutor to get their agreement to submit your assignment on paper.

Students also studied

Students who studied this course also studied at some time:

• The arts past and present (AA100)
• Creative writing (A215)
• Advanced creative writing (A363)
• From Enlightenment to Romanticism c.1780-1830 (A207)
• Worlds of English (U214)

Future availability

The details given here are for the course that starts in October 2012. We expect it to be available once a year.

Fees 2012

See fees and funding options for study from September 2012.

Study explained

Financial support

- find out if you qualify for support with your fees with our eligibility checker.

Study explained

- all you need to know about distance learning with the OU.

A taste of OU study

Your questions

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Or contact an adviser in our Student Registration & Enquiry Service Email or call +44(0) 845 300 60 90+44(0) 845 366 60 35

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