Admission requirements
Admission to the MA Literary Studies, research master Literary Studies, research master Arts, Literature and Media and the two year educational master in English from ICLON. In case of a full course, priority will be given to MA Literary Studies students and ICLON students.
Description
This course explores one of the richest seams in English-language cultural life – the creation of some of the greatest works of Gothic, of children’s literature, of the fantastic, and of science fiction. Why do we enjoy the fantastic? What are the cultural meanings of dreaming? How does British literature and film represent the supernatural, the fabulous, the uncanny, the numinous and the strange? How do such texts illuminate our sense of British and Irish culture and history?
Using the insights of psychoanalysis, political theory, and literary theory we will attempt to answer these questions and others. The course will include children’s books, ghost stories, Gothic fictions, science fiction, dystopias, and the fantasy film. We will examine the following themes in fantastic fictions made in Britain from the 1800s to the early 2000s: the production of fear; the imagination of childhood; nostalgia; the double; transgression and containment; kitsch; the fictionalization of reality; the uses of the unreal; the representation of dreams and fugitive states; the critique of science; frontiers and otherness; conformity and individualism; innocence and corruption.
Course objectives
Course objective 1
This course will extend and deepen the power of students’ critical analysis through in-depth consideration of texts.Course objective 2
Students will explore critical debates surrounding the fantastic, modernity, and identity.Course objective 3
The course will aim to provide for literature students the critical skills necessary for the analysis of literary texts.Course objective 4
Regarding literary works, it will also aim to extend the students’ skills in the reading of narrative and the understanding of the relationship of a text to its historical/cultural/social context.Course objective 5
Students will be encouraged to share analytical and critical views on the texts ascribed in class discussion, including giving presentations, communicating knowledge to an audience, and will focus research skills in the writing of a final research paper, to the same end.Course objective 6
In their papers, the students will show that they have developed the relevant skills for researching and writing on the fantastic.Course objective 7
Further to course objective 5, through a presentation, students will hone their ability to engage the group with a topic, developing their presentational skills. As presentations will be given in small groups, students will also explore their ability to work together in teams.Course objective 8
As part of your presentation, you will work together with other students, developing your interpersonal skills in collaborating on the final presentation.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar (including presentations)
Research – and writing
Assessment method
Assessment
• Classroom Presentation (25%)
• Research essay (4,500 words) (75%)
The deadline for submitting the research essay is 22:00 on Tuesday 7 January. The essay should be presented in accordance with the MLA Stylesheet and must be uploaded to BrightSpace.
The essay will be assessed according to the following criteria: your ability to come up with a ‘thesis statement’ in relation to the topic in question, one that your essay / assignment will coherently and insightfully develop; the quality and sophistication of the central argument; the depth and appropriateness of your research; the scholarliness of your referencing and presentation; the deployment of structure; the quality of the writing; and the originality and depth of your analysis. Any student who plagiarises their work will be in trouble for doing so. Plagiarism includes writing your essay using an AI large-language model-based chatbot, such as ChatGPT.
The essay will be expected by Tuesday 7th January at 22.00. The date for resit essays is 3rd February.
Students who are studying for the Research Master are expected to write an essay of 5000 words. A ResMA essay should include additional methodological reflection and scholarly research.
Attendance is compulsory, and students who do not attend very often and regularly will not have their essays graded.
Students must produce essays that are their own work, without plagiarism or recourse to AI writing tools.
If a student fails an essay (with a grade less than a 5.5), they will have the opportunity to retake it.
Classroom presentations
Classroom presentations will begin in the first week of the course. (If you wish to present on Lewis Carroll, please contact me up to seven days before the first class.) Students sign up for the classroom presentations before the teaching weeks begin. Instructions on how to sign up will be posted on BrightSpace before the start of the course. Students should sign up for two weeks – and depending on the distribution of students’ wishes, you will be allocated one or other of your choices. I will finalize the presentation schedule, accommodating everyone’s preferences as much as possible.
Depending on how many students are in the class, for the presentations, students will work in pairs or in threes. Approximately 10-15 minutes in total length (not including any discussion that follows on from the presentation), presentations should offer a starting point for the seminar as a whole. In general, the presenters introduce a small set of reading questions (most likely two to four), to be discussed during the seminar. The presenters themselves offer a first response to these questions by analysing a few important details, passages, scenes or moments in the primary sources. The aim of this analysis is not, of course, to be definitive or exhaustive but to illustrate how the reading questions can help us explore and understand the primary sources.
The presentations should also draw on ideas and concepts from relevant secondary or theoretical literature and show how these are useful in analysing the primary sources.
Please note that for some weeks, the instructions for the presentation will be a bit more specific; this will be communicated in time by the instructors.
THE GRADING CRITERIA for the presentations: The tutor present in the class will grade the presentations on the following criteria:
Usefulness and sophistication of the reading questions (as thematic starting points for the seminar).
Usefulness and sophistication of the presenters' own first response to these questions (which should involve some degree of close reading).
Use of relevant secondary and/or theoretical literature
Structure and clarity (both in terms of content and presentation/delivery)
Team work (if applicable): division of tasks, coherence between the individual presenters' contributions (this overlaps in part with structure and clarity).
Weighting
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher.
Resit
The date for the resit is 3rd February – this applies to the essay/s and to the edition of a short story. For students, who miss their presentation due to illness, there will be an opportunity provided to ‘resit’ this.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Books:
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass (1865/1872) (ed. Hugh Haughton) (Penguin Classics, 2003).
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings (1844) (ed. Michael Slater) (Penguin Classics, 2003)
Ursula Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest (1976) (Gateway, 2015).
C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (1938) (HarperCollins, 2005)
Michael Newton (editor), The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories (Penguin Books, 2010)
[In this short story anthology, we’ll read stories by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, M. R. James, and Edith Wharton.]
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) (Bloomsbury Children’s Book, 2014)
Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories (1886) (ed. Roger Luckhurst) (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008)
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1938) (HarperCollins, 2011)
Films (to be watched on DVD, Blu-Ray, on archive.org or YouTube, or via a legal streaming service):
(many of the films are available for screening on DVD in the library)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Star Wars (1977) (now known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope)
The Shining (1980)
Big (1988)
Groundhog Day (1993)
*Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi *(2017)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
(There may be an additional film included as part of the course.)-
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal.
Remarks
The weekly breakdown for the course will likely go as follows: the Alice books;* The Hobbit;* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Big and Groundhog Day; C. S. Lewis and Ursula Le Guin; the Star Wars movies; Jekyll and Hyde; The Shining; Ghost Stories; A Christmas Carol & It’s a Wonderful Life
**Students should have read and thought about both of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books for the first class.
**