Course Catalogue

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This course maps the seventeenth-century literary texts in English and Scots that have come to the fore in recent research, covering a historical time period which until relatively recently was considered to be a literary desert. They will here especially be studied in their own cultural contexts, on their own historicised terms, and not based on how they relate to the 1707 Union. By foregrounding non-canonical genres and texts, the course investigates whether these texts collectively constitute a literary sphere with its own rationale(s), be they potentially dead ends or evidence of continuities from the sixteenth into the eighteenth centuries. In doing so, this course will populate the last 'blank' space on the Scottish literature timeline (outwith Gaelic texts).

1x1hr lecture; 1x1hr seminar per week over 10 weeks as scheduled on MyCampus. All teaching on-campus.

This is one of the Honours courses in Scottish Literature and may not run every year. The options being offered this session are available on MyCampus.

Available to all students fulfilling requirements for Honours entry into Scottish Literature, and by arrangement to visiting students or students of other Honours programmes who qualify under the University 's 25% regulation.

Alternative Renaissances (SCOTLIT4024)

None.

Critical assignment (1000 words) - 20%

Two (1750 word) Essays - 40% each

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification. Where, exceptionally, reassessment on Honours courses is required to satisfy professional/accreditation requirements, only the overall course grade achieved at the first attempt will contribute to the Honours classification. For non-Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt. This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students. Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade. Any such exceptions for this course are described below. 

This course aims to:

■ develop an advanced awareness of the major authors, themes and cultural as well as politico-religious history of Scottish literature in this period;

■ analyse the rise of new genres and themes in seventeenth-century Scottish literature;

■ evaluate the differences between authors who remained in Scotland from those who moved abroad;

■ explore the experimental nature of many of these texts in providing their own inflections of English and European literary paradigms;

■ discuss seventeenth-century Scottish texts in ways that do not exclusively position them in a cultural-political teleology of the 1707 Union.

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

■ identify the major qualities of seventeenth-century Scottish literature in lyric, drama, and narrative fiction, as perceived from within its own cultural and literary contexts;

■ evaluate this period's texts according to their individual qualities;

■ demonstrate an understanding of how these qualities relate to formal concerns of genre;

■ exhibit an understanding of how these qualities relate to the specific cultural contexts of Scotland in the seventeenth century; to the wider literary and cultural contexts of England and Europe in the period; and to earlier and later Scottish literature.

■ analyse how the above qualities and emphases relate to their English and European equivalents. 

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.