Culture and Text

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 4
• Convenors: Dr Damian Catan, Dr Nathalie Wourm
• Assessment: a 1500-word essay (50%) and 1500-word take-home test (50%)

In this module we introduce you to the study of written cultures across a variety of periods and language-speaking areas. The initial emphasis will be on the novel but we will also explore other textual artefacts such as the short story, drama, poetry, the essay and other discursive texts. You will gain the skills to analyse different textual media, learn about their histories and how they have developed in different cultural contexts. You will also engage with significant theoretical ideas in the study of written cultures.

A key aim of the module is to enable you to understand and engage with cultures comparatively, allowing you to compare and contrast histories and cultural production across more than one language-speaking area.

Indicative syllabus

• Studying culture and text: introduction, histories, key skills, theories, genres
• Imagining the outsider’s view in eighteenth-century France (Voltaire and Graffigny)
• Imagined community (Spanish novella)
• Gender, race and slavery in Cuba (nineteenth-century novel)
• Defining the nation (constitutions)
• German theatre: Schiller
• French theatre: Beckett
• French poetry: Baudelaire

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• understand aspects of the history of textual artefacts across various cultural contexts such as the French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish-speaking worlds (not all will be covered in any given year)
• understand the differential development of texts across these language-speaking areas
• compare and contrast histories and cultural production across more than one language-speaking area
• use key skills to analyse written texts
• understand key theoretical ideas in the study of written texts
• analyse different textual forms in writing
• engage in academic discussion about written texts.