2. COURSE INFORMATION
2.1 Overview
This handbook covers the Honours School of English Language and Literature, the final two years
of BA (Hons) English Language and Literature award. Undergraduate awards are located at Levels
4, 5 and 6 of the Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications. The Subject Benchmark
Statement for English can be found at https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/subject-benchmark-
statements/sbs-english-15.pdf
This handbook contains essential information about the Faculty and the course that you will need
to refer to on a regular basis throughout the next two years. You can find further useful
information on the Faculty’s Canvas pages for undergraduates at:
canvas.ox.ac.uk
The subject matter of period papers is described as ‘Literature in English’. Although most of your
work, and exam questions, will focus on authors from the British Isles, students are welcome to
study texts written outside these countries, in consultation with their tutors.
Where authors’ dates span the period paper boundary, you should discuss with your tutor where
their work more appropriately falls given your interests. In the exam, it is perfectly acceptable to
discuss the work of a cross-period author within either of the periods their work straddles,
depending on how you wish to interpret it. You must not, however, include it in both periods.
If you have any issues with teaching or supervision, please raise these as soon as possible so that
they can be addressed promptly. Details of who to contact are provided in section 4.6 of this
handbook.
2.2 Educational aims of the BA in English Language and Literature
The programme aims to enable and encourage its students to:
i)
read widely, acquiring knowledge of written texts in most or all periods of English literary
history;
ii)
develop as independent learners and thinkers;
iii)
develop their critical, analytical and comparative skills by engagement with a wide range of
texts written in English;
iv)
pursue a curriculum that is broad and balanced in respect of historical and generic range,
analytical approach, depth, and conceptual sophistication;
v)
acquire knowledge and understanding of the expressive resources of the English language
and the ways in which this relates to and impacts on the production of literary texts;
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vi)
develop skills in the marshalling and deployment of evidence, and in the oral and written
exposition of complex ideas through discursive analysis and argument;
vii)
develop understanding of the relationship between literary theory and practice, including an
awareness of debates regarding the acts of reading and writing;
viii)
think critically and in an historicised manner about the complex relationship between
literary texts and their social, political, cultural and other relevant contexts;
ix)
develop their understanding of the formal and aesthetic dimensions of literary texts;
x)
acquire intellectual and personal skills which are transferable to a wide range of
employment contexts and life experiences;
xi)
select and analyse appropriate examples; weigh evidence; investigate, analyse, and assess
competing historical and critical viewpoints;
xii)
engage and enhance their enthusiasm for the subject and their awareness of its social and
cultural importance;
xiii)
be appropriately prepared for further academic work in English or related disciplines.
2.3 Intended learning outcomes
A. Knowledge and understanding
Students will develop a knowledge and understanding of:
literature written in English between the early Medieval period and the present day;
aspects of the use of the English language in literary and other texts in modern and / or
earlier times, based on an appropriate level of theoretical understanding;
the intellectual processes involved in the collection and deployment of primary evidence in
literary criticism and scholarship;
a precise and professional technical vocabulary, appropriately deployed;
some aspects of literary theory, and of the history of literary criticism;
processes of literary production and dissemination operative in different historical periods.
Related teaching/learning methods and strategies:
Teaching is by means of Faculty lectures and classes, alongside tutorials and classes arranged by
students’ colleges. The general Faculty lectures and classes (open to the whole University) offer
instruction in and demonstrations of the application of critical method to literary materials.
Faculty seminars are also the vehicle for delivering one of the third-year extended essay papers
and are an opportunity for group analysis and discussion of a specific literary or linguistic subject
area. College classes (typically about 8 students) may address contextual or textual issues and will
encourage assimilation of material and oral analysis and exposition. The tutorial (typically 2
students) will focus on written essays and will often allow the student’s own writing to set the
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intellectual agenda. The essay will form the basis for a wide-ranging discussion; it tests, on a
regular (but non-examined) basis, the students’ developing abilities in assimilation and analysis,
presentation and persuasiveness.
Classes and tutorials, and preparatory work for them, require active learning from the student.
The course requires students to read and analyse literature from a very wide range of historical
periods and in most recognised literary genres. Cumulatively it allows students to develop their
own intellectual archive of texts, approaches and contexts, and encourages them to synthesise,
historicise and compare writings across the complete history of literature/s in English. While not
making obligatory any explicitly theorised syllabus content, the course expects all students to
develop a sensitised awareness of theoretical issues by exposure through lectures and other
forms of teaching to a wide range of theoretical and ideological approaches to literary and
cultural history. In Year 1 students study a core skills-led paper and three period-based papers.
The skills-led paper is studied concurrently with, and supports, the period-based papers. The
period papers’ avoidance of set texts (except for commentary work in the Medieval Prelims and
FHS papers) encourages wide reading, gives the students freedom to negotiate their own portfolio
of authors and allows exploration and innovation alongside study of the ‘canon’, all within the
parameters of guided tutorial work. Work in subsequent years completes the core of period
papers and allows more specialised study of specific genres and authors, whilst also requiring
compulsory work on Middle English language. Skills are developed cumulatively and are
embedded in the assumptions and expectations of the syllabus.
Assessment:
Formally, aspects of the required knowledge and understanding are tested through written
University examinations held during the course of the third and ninth terms, portfolios submitted
in the third and eighth terms, and by two extended essays submitted in the seventh and eighth
terms. At college level, extensive preparation for the organisation and communication of such
knowledge and understanding is provided by highly personalised formative assessment offered in
(typically) weekly tutorials and by practice examinations set and marked by college tutors. The
feedback received in discussion during tutorials is central to student development. All colleges
also have a regime of termly report writing that offers regular valuable feedback and formative
assessment to the student.
B. Skills and other attributes
Students will have the opportunity to develop the following skills during the course:
i.
Intellectual skills:
The ability to:
listen and read with an open but critical mind;
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exercise critical judgment and undertake sophisticated synthesis, analysis and evaluation of
varying kinds of evidence;
read closely, analytically, and with understanding, texts from a wide range of historical
periods and in many different styles and genres;
argue persuasively and with appropriate illustration and evidence, both orally and in
writing;
approach literary texts and critical issues with imagination, sensitivity and creativity;
develop independence of mind, including an ability to challenge received opinion.
Teaching/learning methods and strategies:
There is emphasis throughout the programme on the skills relevant to the careful and critical
reading and exegesis of primary texts and of secondary studies. These include the ability to
gather, sift, and assess evidence, and the development of sophisticated skills of literary criticism.
Faculty lectures will aim to demonstrate the professional deployment of these skills in high-level
analysis of texts and contexts, ideas and ideologies. The skills of presentation and discussion are
honed within the tutorial context, and in classes at college and Faculty level. Student essays and
presentations must demonstrate the ability to identify issues, and to marshal evidence and
analysis in a logical and coherent way. These attributes, allied to the exercise of disciplined
imagination, are regarded as essential if students are to comprehend the often disparate and
unfamiliar values and expectations of past cultures and their texts. All learning strategies are
designed to inculcate these skills of independent thought and expression, although they will be
displayed and tested most obviously in college tutorials and classes.
Assessment:
The formative assessment and feedback provided by classes and tutorials is critical to the
development and monitoring of the intellectual skills set out here. In tutorials, students are
subjected to regular scrutiny on these skills through presentation and defence of written essay
material in front of an established academic literary scholar and one or more of the student’s peer
group. In classes, presentations to a larger group of peers need to be thorough, professional,
appropriately pitched, and critically and textually persuasive.
ii.
Practical skills
advanced literacy and communication skills (oral and written) and the ability to apply these
for specific audiences and in appropriate contexts;
the ability to acquire, process, order and deploy large quantities of information (literary,
theoretical, contextual and critical);
active learning;
critical and self-reflective reasoning;
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research and bibliographic skills, developed through guidance and allowing independent
critical working of a high order of reliability and accuracy;
IT skills such as word-processing, and the ability to access, manipulate and assess electronic
data;
group working and presentation skills through seminar and class participation.
Teaching/learning methods and strategies
Classes and tutorials require constant verbal and written interaction with peers and tutors in
differently constituted audiences. Longer extended essays require fuller documentation than
timed examination papers. Guidance is given through Faculty lectures on preparation for such
long essays, and Faculty Handbooks and college guidance offer assistance with communication
and study skills. There are induction sessions at Faculty and college levels, covering both study
skills and IT skills. There are regular opportunities for the development of new skills (e.g. through
Faculty and University IT training or the University Language Centre). The Faculty’s employment of
different modes of assessment, and the imposition of regular long and short term deadlines
throughout the course, demand a high level of time management and a commitment to managing
personal learning.
Assessment
Formative assessment is offered both through the college tutorial, in which the tutor will give
formative feedback through discussion of the weekly essays submitted, and through
presentations given regularly in college and Faculty classes. These enable continuous monitoring
of the development of practical skills. Timed three hour examinations, portfolios of 4,000 and
6,000 words, a 6,000-word extended essay and an 8,000-word dissertation require different
strategies of learning and organisation, and encourage the development of a range of writing
skills
. Termly tutorial reports identify points of excellence and of concern, e.g. the ability to
present and defend an argument or thesis convincingly and cogently. More formal assessment
through college practice examinations provide opportunities to assess and provide feedback on
skills associated with timed written examinations.
iii.
Transferable skills
At the end of the programme the student should be able to:
find information, organise and deploy it;
draw on such information and, with a trained analytical intelligence, explore complex
issues in ways that are imaginative yet sensitive to the integrity of the materials under
discussion and the needs of different target audiences;
formulate opinions and argue these confidently, whilst remaining appropriately responsive
to the ideas of others;
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work well independently, with a strong sense of self-direction, but with the ability to work
constructively in co-operation with others;
effectively structure and communicate ideas in a variety of written and oral formats;
analyse and critically examine different forms of discourse;
plan and organise the use of time effectively, particularly in relation to the weekly
timetable of tutorials and associated essays;
where relevant, make appropriate use of language and IT skills.
Teaching/learning methods and strategies
The programme requires:
information retrieval and highly competent bibliographic work, including the informed use
of IT. (This is integral to all aspects of the programme which, although providing guidance
and reading lists, also requires students to exercise their initiative and research skills as
active learners to explore available resources);
the ability to present ideas effectively and to respond to the ideas of others constructively.
(Tutorials, classes and lectures each require different forms of engagement with ideas and
arguments);
the ability to produce material within time constraints and against tight deadlines, whether
within the framework of the written examination, in submitting the extended essays, or in
the programme of tutorials and classes;
independent work in preparing for tutorials and extended essays, and more collaborative
work in classes organised by the Faculty and within colleges;
Assessment
The transferable skills identified above are essential elements of the programme. As such their
presence or absence is the focus of much of the regular comment provided by tutors in their
contacts with students; and in the varying modes of formative assessment and formal feedback
provided to students throughout the course. They are implicit in timed examination papers and
highly relevant to the Faculty’s classification criteria.
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2.4 Course structure
Course I
Course II
Year 2
Year 3
Year 2
Year 3
Paper 1: Shakespeare
Paper 1: Literature in
Paper 6: Special
English 650-1100
Options. 6a, 6b, OR 6c.
Paper 2: Medieval English
Paper 2: Literature in
Paper 6: Special
and related Literatures
Paper 7: Dissertation
English 1350-1550
Options
1066-1550
Paper 3: Literature in
Paper 7:
Paper 3: Literature in
English 1550-1660
Dissertation
English 1350-1550
Paper 4: Literature in
Paper 4: History of the
English 1660-1760
English Language to c. 1800
Paper 5: Literature in
Paper 5: Shakespeare OR The Material Text
English 1760-1830
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2.5 Recommended pattern of teaching
English
Course I
College
Faculty
This is a guide to the typical pattern of tutorials and
s
classes offered by colleges. The actual number of
Paper
rial
asses
to
asses
classes or tutorials may vary between colleges. All
Cl
Tu
Cl
papers are supplemented by optional Faculty
lectures.
Paper 1 (Shakespeare)
4
4
Paper 2 (1350-1550)
4
6
Paper 3 (1550-1660)
4
4
Paper 4 (1660-1760)
4
4
Paper 5 (1760-1830)
4
4
Paper 6 (Special Options)
5
Five Faculty seminars in the first term of the final year,
supplemented by two individual meetings with course
convenors to give feedback on written work
Paper 7 (Dissertation)
4 hours of college-based supervision, including email and
phone contact, typically in the second term of the final
year
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Course II: Course structure: Seven compulsory papers. Students choose between 6a, 6b or 6c.
English
Course 2
College
Faculty
This is a guide to the typical pattern of tutorials
s
and classes offered by colleges. The actual
Paper
rial
asses
to
asses
number of classes or tutorials may vary
Cl
Tu
Cl
between colleges. All papers are supplemented
by optional Faculty lectures.
Paper 1 (600-1100)
6
4
Paper 2 (1066-1550)
4
4
Paper 3 (1350-1550)
6
4
Paper 4 (The English Language)
4
4
Paper 5a (The Material Text)
4
4
Paper 5b (Shakespeare)
4
4
Paper 6a (1550-1660)
4
4
Paper 6b (Special Options)
5
Five Faculty seminars in the first term of the final
year, supplemented by two individual meetings with
course convenors to give feedback on written work
Paper 6c (Course II Special
Options)
2
6
Paper 7 (Dissertation)
4 hours of college-based supervision, including email
and phone contact, typically in the second term of
the final year
2.6 Course I paper information
You will take each of the following seven papers, which will be assessed by a combination of
timed examinations and submitted written work.
The subject matter of period papers is described as ‘Literature in English’. Although most of your
work, and exam questions, will focus on authors from the British Isles, students are welcome to
study texts written outside these countries, in consultation with their tutors. You might find that
there is greater scope for studying non-British authors on later period papers, where American
and postcolonial texts are particularly important.
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In some papers, you might want to include some commentary on texts which were not originally
in English. For Papers 1-5, the general rule is that you may write on such texts for no more than
one-third of the paper. For Paper 6, this rule can be waived if the convenors of the course give
explicit permission to the candidate. If students wish to waive this rule, they should discuss their
topic and treatment with the convenor in good time and in every case well before the
consultation deadline. For Paper 7, you may refer to writing originally in foreign languages so long
as the focus of your essay is on English language or literature in English; and you may discuss
translations so long as you focus on their significance in relation to English language or as part of
English literature. If a Paper 6 option focuses on texts not originally written in English, that will be
made clear in the course description. You should always assume that the examiner does not have
knowledge of the original language. In the case of medieval literature (up until 1550), you may
write on the literatures of the British Isles in that period (such as medieval French, Welsh, and
Latin).
Where authors’ dates span the period paper boundary, you should discuss with your tutor where
their work more appropriately falls given your interests. In the exam, it is perfectly acceptable to
discuss the work of a cross-period author within either of the periods their work straddles,
depending on how you wish to interpret it. You should not repeat material across different parts
of the examination, including Paper 6 and the dissertation.
2.6.1 Paper 1: Shakespeare
The Shakespeare paper provides an opportunity to get to grips with an entire canon and its
contexts. Although you can study Shakespeare chronologically or generically (tracing his
development from the early plays and poems or through a genre), the exam portfolio (like your
tutorials from which the portfolio develops) provides opportunities to mix and match. Thinking
thematically, you can place early comedies with later histories (identity in
Comedy of Errors and
Henry V for example); thinking generically you can consider sonnets and poems alongside poetry
within the plays for instance. This is also a paper in which you can make full use of your reading
for Papers 3, 4 and 5 (as well as your knowledge from your Prelims papers) to research an area
such as Shakespeare and performance, political receptions, colonial and postcolonial
appropriations, cultural attitudes and uses, editorial history, the history of specific actors and
actresses, adaptations (in forms from film to novels), or literary theory. Your teaching will cover a
representative range of the canon, and you are also expected to have an in-depth knowledge of a
number of plays. There is opportunity to investigate genres and periods (‘farce’; ‘Senecan
tragedy’; ‘late style’) as well as to pursue a topic-based approach. Two of your three portfolio
examination answers will require you to address more than one work by Shakespeare. Teaching
and lecturing for the paper generally takes place in Trinity term of your second year and
Michaelmas of your third year.
Structure of the examination
The paper will be examined by a portfolio of three essays. Each essay is to be a minimum of 1500
words and a maximum of 2000 words. (The word count includes footnotes but excludes
bibliography and title). The portfolio is designed to make your Shakespeare topics as exciting and
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as expansive as possible. This is more feasible with tutorial essays in which you choose your own
topics than it is in an exam format. Of the three essays, one can be an attempt to edit a passage
(the passage will not be included in the word total; only the glossing will count towards the word
limit); a commentary; or something similarly innovative in the scholarly canon but not catered for
in the usual exam format. (Creative writing, however, is not eligible.) There is no obligation to
include an essay that is different in this way: analytical essays in the normal format are equally
acceptable.
The portfolio must be submitted by noon on Monday, Week 2 Hilary term of the third year.
Breadth and depth
The portfolio is designed to show your depth and range as a scholar. At least two of your essays
must be on more than one work by Shakespeare (NB the Sonnets count as a single
work.) Reference to Shakespeare’s contemporaries is also encouraged: one essay may be on
the relation between Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Your portfolio will show your
depth/breadth of reading and understanding both of the Shakespeare canon and of critical
approaches to Shakespeare’s works, covering a range of texts and a variety of ways of thinking
about them.
Choosing and consulting
The three essays can be selected from your tutorial work throughout the year or they can be
written specially for the portfolio. (If written specially for the portfolio they will not be read or
marked by your tutor.) You may rewrite your tutorial essays for submission in the light of
discussion during the tutorial and written feedback on your essay; your tutor, however, will not
discuss the revised version with you or mark it. You may choose your three essays for submission
in consultation with your tutor or independently, but you may not discuss with any tutor your
choice of content or the method of handling it after Friday, Week 8 of Michaelmas Term of the
third year.
Titles Each essay in your portfolio must have a title. Titles take many forms. You can choose a
Shakespeare quotation. You can choose a quotation from a critic or from another early modern
writer or from a writer from any period. (Quotations from previous exam papers are permitted.)
Look at journal articles to see how they form their titles. Your title should not look like an exam
question (‘Discuss Shakespeare’s attitude to…’). The title is excluded from the word count.
Bibliography
Each essay should have its own bibliography (if appropriate to the essay). Not all essays require
bibliographies – for instance, if you are doing a close reading of language a bibliography may not
be appropriate. The bibliography is excluded from the word count.
Word Count Each essay should total between 1500-2000 words, excluding the bibliography and title.
Footnotes are included in the word count.
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Information on presentation and referencing requirements for submitted essays may be found in
sections 3.5. and 3.6 of this handbook.
2.6.2 Paper 2: Literature in English 1350–1550
At the beginning of this period, Europe was entering into a period of social change in the wake of
the pandemic known as the Black Death. People in Britain and Ireland spoke and wrote in several
languages (including dialects of English and Scots; Welsh; Cornish; Irish; French; Latin), and
cultural exchange was facilitated by extensive global trade networks stretching well beyond the
Mediterranean. In the fifteenth century, the advent of printing, and European encounters with
the so-called New World of the Americas are powerful historical markers of change, along with
repeated bloody conflict including the Wars of the Roses, and the ongoing Hundred Years’ War.
By 1550, religious reform, Tudor court politics and humanist scholarship helped change both
literary forms and their engagement with larger literate audiences. The literature produced across
these two hundred years can be profoundly European, often rooted in classical, Italian and French
sources, existing in multilingual manuscripts, and explicitly engaging with international political,
religious, and cultural concerns. Much of it also engages colonial and postcolonial concerns in its
entanglement with the Crusades and their imaginative aftermath (particularly in romance), with
European expansionism and encounters with different cultures (for instance in More’s
Utopia),
and in its fantasies of travel (for instance
Mandeville’s Travels). Equally, much of it serves local and
personal interests and was circulated amongst small groups of listeners and readers. As you study
this paper, you will be encouraged to think about how literature in different varieties of English is
embedded within other literatures, and to interrogate the periodization of ‘late medieval’ and
‘renaissance’ or early modern’.
This paper covers the work of Chaucer and other major fourteenth-century writers (such as
Langland, the
Gawain-poet and Gower), as well as that of less widely known names, and many
anonymous texts. Women such as Margery Kempe, who travelled to Jerusalem and Rome and
wrote an early ‘autobiography,’ and Julian of Norwich, an important mystic and theologian, are
key literary figures in this period. The paper also covers fifteenth-century writers (such as
Hoccleve, Malory and the Older Scots poets), and writers of the early Tudor period (such as
Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey and More). Much of the time you might group your reading not by author,
but by genre or manuscript collection. One of the most important genres across the period is
drama: from the religious cycle plays, performed in the streets of cities, to morality plays acted in
the round, to household drama (such as Medwall’s plays) acted in great halls. However, the paper
includes a great variety of written forms, from love lyrics to chronicles, dream visions to advice
books, and from animal fables to Arthurian romances.
Areas for investigation include: authorship and authority; translation; vernacularity; manuscript
culture; early print culture; medieval literary theory; the performance of gender; travel writing;
autobiography; heresy and orthodoxy; chivalry; race and ethnicity; subjectivity; genre theory;
literature and kingship; literature and the marketplace. As much recent scholarship has
demonstrated, a wide range of theoretical and formalist approaches can be taken to the literature
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of this period. Most colleges teach this paper in the first two terms of your second year and
regular lectures covering the literature of the period also take place during these two terms.
The paper will contain a compulsory commentary element designed to ensure that your study of
Middle English literature is accompanied by a good acquaintance with its language and registers.
The set text for this part of the paper is Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde (Riverside edition). You
may also write on Chaucer in the essay section of the exam, but discussion of his works may take
up no more than one essay (or equivalent, spread across both essays). It is not advisable to write
substantially on
Troilus and Criseyde in the essay section of the paper. Note that the Auchinleck
manuscript, though produced probably in the 1330s, may be studied within this paper.
Structure of the examination
This paper is examined by a three-hour timed exam. Students will be expected to answer two
essay questions, and one commentary question.
2.6.3 Paper 3: Literature in English 1550–1660, excluding the works of Shakespeare
This paper encompasses the reigns of Edward VI (1547-1553), Mary (1553-1558), Elizabeth I
(1558-1603), James VI and I (1603-1625), Charles I (1625-1649) and the Interregnum (1649-1660).
Paper 3 offers a period rich in formal experimentation, in the importation of classical and
continental forms, in translation, in literary theory, in religious writing and in historical chronicle.
You will find household names throughout Paper 3: the drama of Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton;
the epic poetry and pastoral of Edmund Spenser; sonnets by Sidney and Drayton; the
metaphysical and religious poetry of Donne, Vaughan, Herbert, Marvell; the Cavalier poetry of
Lovelace, Herrick, Cowley, Suckling, Waller, Carew. The prose of the period also offers a rich field.
Nonfictional prose was dominant in many forms: sermons, martyrologies, diaries, letters,
autobiographies, scientific writing (Bacon), ecclesiastical prose (Richard Hooker), speeches (Queen
Elizabeth), travel writing, medical works (Burton). In fiction romance novellas, many of which
were used as sources of plays by writers such as Shakespeare, paved the way for what would later
become the novel.
This period also provides a wide variety of less well-known but increasingly (or incipiently)
canonical authors, including; Anne Lok (or Lock), Mary Sidney, Lady Mary Wroth, Elizabeth Carey
and Jane Lumley. This period responds particularly well to thematic approaches. Topics which are
prominent in current academic books (and recent exam papers) include: myth, classical revision
and appropriation, Catholicism, Italy, nationhood, London, historiography, grief, the history of the
emotions, subjectivity, self-fashioning, magic and the supernatural, death, travel and discovery,
service, reputation, myth, law, place, regional or national identity, wantonness in poetry and/or
behaviour.
Equally, the period’s interest in experimentation and development means that approaches via
form, genre, and style are very rewarding: epyllion, elegy, allegory, parody, epithalamion, blazon,
epigram, the essay, rogue literature, the masque, romance, sacred texts, satire, pastoral, history,
tragedy and comedy and their subsets (revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, tragicomedy, citizen
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comedy, humours comedy). And the development of the English language in this period, to say
nothing of rhetorical training at school and university, means that linguistic excess, plainness,
neologism, commonplacing, ‘inkhorn’ and ‘honeyed’ terms, and all aspects of form (visual shape,
stanzaic form, metre, rhyme etc) deserve close attention.
Colleges usually teach this paper in the first term of the second year.
Structure of the examination
This paper is examined by a three-hour timed exam. Students will be expected to answer three
essay questions.
2.6.4 Paper 4: Literature in English 1660-1760
This is an exciting period of literature which sees the flourishing of new genres (the novel, the
periodical, mock-epic), the growth of print and readership, re-energising of older forms to speak
to the moment (satire, epic, the emergence of literary criticism). You can in this paper chart the
rise of the novel from Aphra Behn through to Laurence Sterne, and explore the subtle poetry of
mind and sentiment of Thomson, Akenside, Gray, Collins. Teaching aims to provide a sense of the
intellectual history of the period (the history of ideas and thinkers) and the impact on literary
modes of expression of important political and social contexts: the Restoration of Charles II, the
Wars of the Spanish Succession and the Seven Years War, the growth of party politics and
contractual theories of government, the expansion of English empire and with it the beginnings of
anti-imperial critique and abolitionist sentiment, and the entry of women into print in significant
numbers along with the birth of feminism.
Topics or genres for study include: libertinism; the Restoration and eighteenth-century stage and
the impact of the stage licensing act in 1737; the new philosophy and literature; party and
partisan writing; the literature of science and the Royal Society; the representation of women;
women as authors and women as readers; politics and genre; life writing; the familiar letter; ideas
of nationhood; trade and empire and the city; the oriental tale; labouring class poetry, pastoral
and Georgic; epic and mock-epic; satire and theories of satire; travel writing; early landscape
writing; representation of racial difference; literature and the visual arts; early American writing;
religious writing, prophecy and allegory; the Ancients and Moderns debate; Grub Street and print
culture and the relationship between manuscript and print; the literary coterie and court culture;
literature and the rise of finance (capital satires).
Paper 4 encompasses a very wide range of authors, both male and female: including Milton (the
later poems such as
Paradise Lost,
Paradise Regained, and
Samson Agonistes); Aphra Behn;
Katherine Phillips; Anne Finch; Ann Bradshaw; John Bunyan; John Dryden; Andrew Marvell (who
can also be studied as part of Paper 3); John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester; Margaret Cavendish;
Jonathan Swift; Alexander Pope; John Gay; Bernard Mandeville; Mary Leapor; Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu; Samuel Johnson; James Thomson; Thomas Gray; William Collins; Daniel Defoe..
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Colleges tend to teach this paper in the second term of the second year; there are regular lecture
series covering the major topics and themes of this period. Distinctive to the teaching of this
period is that a half-day of short lectures at the start of term (Introduction to Literature and
Contexts 1660-1760) aims to introduce students to the major debates, genres, and contexts of the
literary period.
Structure of the examination
This paper is examined by a three-hour timed exam. Students will be expected to answer three
essay questions.
2.6.5 Paper 5: Literature in English 1760–1830
In this paper you may study texts from the period 1760 to 1830 by author, theme, genre, or
historical context. Teaching is designed to give you a sense of the major literary and cultural
developments, as well as an opportunity to explore both well-known and less well-known
materials in a very diverse period.
The period covers poets such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Blake, Robert Burns, George
Gordon Lord Byron, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Cowper, George Crabbe, Felicia
Hemans, John Keats, James Macpherson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Christopher Smart, Charlotte
Smith, Phyllis Wheatley, William Wordsworth, Anne Yearsley; novelists such as Jane Austen,
Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Thomas Love Peacock, Anne Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Walter
Scott, Laurence Sterne; dramatists such as Joanna Baillie, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver
Goldsmith; and non-fiction prose writers such as James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Olaudah Equiano,
William Godwin, William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft.
Some of the many topics and lines of enquiry you may wish to pursue in this paper include: genres
and modes such as lyric, satire, ballads, pastoral, epic, fragments, the Gothic novel, the fiction of
sensibility, closet drama, epistolary fiction, regional novels, life writing, historical fiction, travel
writing, literary criticism; aesthetic ideas such as the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque;
poetry and its relation to the ‘sister arts’; the figure of the poet and the defence of poetry; literary
language and style; literary influence and reception; the review culture; radical circles and literary
coteries; working-class literature; dialect poetry; Orientalism; the Scottish Enlightenment;
questions of personal identity, madness, gender, childhood, sexuality, addiction. Also of interest
in this paper are issues hotly debated in the literature of the period: national identity, religion, the
sense of the past; slavery and the abolition movement; the rights of women; the city;
developments in science and philosophy; the French Revolution and the founding of the American
republic; Napoleon and war; the union between Britain and Ireland.
Colleges usually teach this paper in the last term of the first year of FHS. Regular lectures covering
different aspects of the literature of the period take place in this term and sometimes in earlier
terms as well.
Structure of the examination
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This paper is examined by a three-hour timed exam. Students will be expected to answer three
essay questions.
2.6.6 Paper 6: Special Options
For this paper, you will take for detailed study one topic from a list of options supplied by the
Faculty (the list will be updated yearly). There are likely to be topics from the whole range of
periods covered by the syllabus; these will not only be period- or subject-based, but will also
adopt a wide variety of theoretical, interdisciplinary, trans-historical, generic or cross-generic
approaches. All special options will be taught in centrally organised classes of around 8-15
students in Michaelmas Term of your third year, giving you the opportunity to engage in inter-
collegiate group work and experience a different style of teaching. There will be five classes held
in the first five weeks of term, and two individual meetings each of around 30 minutes with one of
the course convenors to receive feedback on written work. You will decide on a theme for your
essay in discussion with the option convenors; extended essays do not need to cover the whole
course, but can focus on a specific area (including a specific chronological area) of the topic.
Essays will usually focus on some of the set texts from the course.
Specialist language options will also be offered (for example, we usually offer Old Norse). You will
need to consult with your college tutor before requesting a specialist early language option.
Note
that some of these early language options may be examined by written examination in Trinity
term, rather than by extended essay. If this is the case it will be stated in the option description.
Details of the options available will be circulated at the end of Hilary Term in your second year;
enrolment will then take place early in the following Trinity Term (specific instructions about the
process will be provided by the Faculty). As there will a cap on the numbers of places available on
each option, you will be asked to list a number of possible choices and in the case of any over-
subscribed options, places will be allocated by random ballot. Confirmation of your special option
will be provided to you by the end of Week 6 of Trinity Term. Before the end of Trinity Term, the
convenors of your course will provide a reading list for the summer vacation, but you are not
expected to formulate a topic for your essay until part way through Michaelmas Term.
Note that you need to avoid duplication when it comes to examinations: you must not write
substantially in the period papers on material you have used for this paper. You also may not
discuss with any tutor your choice of content or the method of handling it after the conclusion of
teaching for the paper on Friday of Week 6 of Michaelmas Term.
Structure of the examination
Unless otherwise specified in the option description, the paper is assessed by one extended essay
of 5,000 – 6,000 words (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography and title), submitted
by noon on Thursday, Week 8 in Michaelmas Term of the third year.
Information on presentation and referencing requirements for submitted essays may be found in
section 3.4 and 3.5 of this handbook.
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2.6.7 Paper 7: Dissertation
This paper gives you the chance to explore a particular interest, to develop in more detail work on
authors, topics, or genres that you have studied in your tutorials and classes for other papers, or
to work on an area you may not have explored before, with a greater degree of freedom than that
offered under the Paper 6 Special Options. It is entirely appropriate for a dissertation to have a
broad or thematic subject covering more than one period. The focus here is on independent
research supervised by a tutor.
You can work on a single author or a range of authors in this paper, although it is advisable to
show knowledge of a good range of texts, and you should be able to situate your area of
investigation in a wider context, depending on your specific interests and approach. Such contexts
may comprise, for example, the history and theory of criticism, concepts of genre and literary
tradition, feminist or post-colonial approaches to literature, political and cultural history, or the
history and theory of the English Language. The above list is not exhaustive, and these specific
contexts need not apply; nor are these broad categories exclusive of one another. You are of
course at liberty, in consultation with your tutor, to shape your own particular approach to your
topic and choose a title accordingly. Information may be found at the start of this handbook
regarding the study of texts which were not originally written in English.
It is not generally advisable to produce a title which looks like an examination question (‘How do
any two Victorian authors represent London?’). Instead, you might look at recent journal articles
and chapters in edited collections to get a sense of the sorts of academic titling that are
appropriate. The title should give a clear indication of the principal area to be covered by your
dissertation: so ‘Lady Mary Wroth in the House of Busirane’ is a little opaque; ‘Lady Mary Wroth
in the House of Busirane: Wroth’s use of Spenserian Romance’ is preferable, because it gives a
clear sense of what the dissertation is about. Remember that part of the task of setting a title is to
identify an area you can properly cover within the word limit: an overambitious topic is not likely
to give you the best opportunity to show your abilities to the full.
You should begin thinking about what topic you might choose in Trinity Term of your second year:
tutors will arrange an initial consultation with you during this term, at which you will need to plan
your initial reading for the summer vacation. If you choose a topic in which none of your college
tutors is a specialist, they will find a dissertation supervisor from another college to teach you.
You will then continue your research through Michaelmas Term of your third year, and will have
to submit a summary of no more than 100 words to the Chair of Examiners by Thursday, Week 8
of that term. You will be informed as to whether your summary has been approved by the end of
the first week of Hilary term.
Overall, you will receive a maximum of four hours supervision for this paper, including any email
or phone contact. The exact timing of these sessions will be decided by you and your tutor,
depending on how much help you need at each stage of your research, and how far through your
research you are at any particular point, but all teaching must have finished by Friday, Week 6 of
Hilary Term. Tutors are allowed to give you reading suggestions, and to read dissertation plans
and sections of your work, but are not permitted to comment on final drafts.
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In Hilary Term, the dissertation will be the main paper you are working on, and you will be
writing first and final drafts. The deadline for submitting the dissertation is noon on Tuesday,
Week 9 of Hilary Term.
Structure of the examination
One dissertation of 7,000 - 8,000 words (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography and
title), submitted by noon on Tuesday, Week 9 in Hilary Term of the third year.
Information on presentation and referencing requirements for submitted essays may be found in
section 3.5 and 3.6 of this handbook.
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2.7 Course II paper information
Introduction
Course II has a more focused timespan than Course I, but involves a wider range of approaches
and methodologies, including the study of manuscripts and editing, the history of the English
Language, and the comparative study of English with other European literatures, which may be
read in translation.
Building on students’ Prelims work in Old and Early Middle English literature, Course II develops
detailed knowledge of literature from the Anglo-Saxon to the Early Modern period, and alongside
this hones skills in linguistic analysis; in understanding how texts were circulated orally, in
manuscript and in print; and in contextualizing literary texts through studying the broader culture
of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Course II students may offer the Shakespeare paper from
Course I, and may choose any of the Paper 6 special options or may take the Course I Renaissance
literature paper. They must also write a dissertation on any period or approved topic.
Subjects and Modes of Assessment
Course II has four core papers normally studied in Year 2. Two are period papers, which develop
students’ knowledge of Old English literature (Paper 1) and later medieval literature (Paper 3).
The latter is shared with Course I (in which it is called Paper 2), and so for this paper Course II
students will be taught and examined with Course I students. Another paper (2) focuses on a
particular genre and places it in a Europe-wide cultural context. These three papers are assessed
by examination at the end of term 9 of the degree. Paper 1 requires three essays, Paper 2 requires
two essays, and Paper 3 requires two essays and one commentary. The other core paper, 4,
investigates the development of the English language and is assessed by a portfolio of one essay
and one commentary in term 6 of the degree (i.e., the Trinity term of the second year).
Students also choose three special subject papers:
Special Option: generally taken as an extended essay in term 7. All the Special Options from
Course I Paper 6 are available to Course II students. In addition, Special Option Course II
choices enable students to develop particular interests in types of medieval literature,
language work (both medieval and modern), or work in different medieval languages (other
languages currently include Old French, Old Norse and medieval Welsh). Anglo-Saxon
Archaeology is also an option in Course II. Some of these options draw on expertise from
medievalists in other faculties. Or students may opt to take the Course I 1550–1660 period
paper.
Either ‘The Material Text’, which introduces the study of medieval manuscripts, scribes and
editing; or the Course I Shakespeare paper. Both are assessed by a portfolio of written work.
Dissertation: this may be on any period(s) and any topic approved by the examiners.
Submitted as an essay of up to 8,000 words at the end of Term 8.
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Compulsory Papers
2.7.1 Paper 1: Literature in English, 650 – 1100
Anglo-Saxon England was a melting pot of Germanic, Celtic and Mediterranean cultural influences
and home to the richest European vernacular literature of the early middle ages. This period saw
the emergence of new and sophisticated literary styles and genres, both in verse and prose,
influenced by Christian-Latin learning, as well as the preservation of the ancient oral traditions of
the continent. Whether or not you have studied Old English for Prelims, Course II Paper 1 allows
you to explore in detail the remarkable variety of Old English literature. As well as encountering
major literary figures such as Cynewulf, King Alfred, Ælfric and Wulfstan, areas of study could
include heroic and epic narratives such as
Beowulf; lyric and elegiac poetry; riddles, charms and
prayers; biblical stories and saints’ lives; wisdom literature; travel narrative and romance;
chronicles and histories; homilies and sermons; scientific, theological and philosophical writing;
manuscripts and material culture You may place the Old English literature you read in a broad
range of historical, cultural, linguistic, theoretical and critical contexts. This paper will be taught in
college-based tutorials, and will be supplemented by Faculty lectures. Teaching will mostly take
place in the Michaelmas term of your second year.
Structure of the examination: This paper is examined by a three-hour timed exam. Students will
be expected to answer three essay questions.
2.7.2 Paper 2: Medieval English and Related Literatures, 1066–1550
This paper encourages candidates to work across the entire later medieval period 1000-1550 (i.e.
including relevant literature from the first half of the eleventh century), and to do comparative
work with medieval literature in insular or European languages other than English, which are
expected to have been studied in translation. It is a paper on a specified genre or theme, subject
to periodic review.
From October 2018, for first examination in Trinity Term 2020, the specified genre will be
Lyric.
The lyric mode is one of the earliest and most lasting forms of literature. Standing alongside, in
dialogue with, and often embedded within, narrative genres, it is a distinctive form of
representation, mediated through a voice with no stable identity. It is understood that definitions
of ‘lyric’ in this period will be necessarily flexible, and that the genre may be taken to include a
wide variety of short poems, including ballades, rondeaux, virelais, chansons, songs and carols. It
may include individual short poems or sequences of such poems, and it may also include lyrics
embedded in other genres, such as plays or sermons. The ubiquity of these kinds of writing
throughout Europe in the medieval period, in both vernaculars and varieties of Latin, makes them
particularly engaging for comparative or contrastive study. Candidates are encouraged to develop
particular, focused interests that they may trace comparatively across different languages and
through time. The rubric specifies that candidates must show knowledge both of earlier literature
(1000-1350) and of literature in other languages. The paper requires only that such knowledge be
shown at some point in the paper, but a candidate who so wishes may concentrate exclusively, or
mostly, on such material. The other insular languages that may be studied in translation include
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the French of England, Latin, Old Norse, Welsh and Irish. Other European literatures studied in
translation include continental French, Occitan, Spanish, German, Italian and the Arabic and
Hebrew of Spain, as well as continental Latin writings of the period. You may wish to explore the
material contexts in which such texts were disseminated, perhaps taking into account their
relationships with other arts, such as music and manuscript illumination. Equally, you may wish to
explore relevant critical and theoretical perspectives and topics, such as voice, or the particular
social, gendered and institutional contexts that gave rise to these kinds of writing.
This paper will be taught by a combination of central, Faculty-based classes or lectures and
college-based tutorials. Teaching will take place in the Hilary term of your second year.
Structure of the examination: The paper will be assessed by a three-hour examination in the
Trinity term of your third year. It will require two equally weighted 90 minute essays.
NB: Candidates are reminded that they must not repeat material across their FHS examinations
as a whole; they must therefore carefully plan their work for this paper in combination with
their work for Paper 3 (Course I, Paper 2, 1350-1550).
2.7.3 Paper 3: Literature in English, 1350–1550 (shared with Course I, Paper 2)
At the beginning of this period, Europe was entering into a period of social change in the wake of
the Black Death. The poetry of the British Isles was multilingual, and cultural exchange was
facilitated by extensive global trade networks. In the fifteenth century, the advent of print, and
European encounters with the so-called New World of the Americas are powerful historical
markers of change. By 1550, the Henrician reformation and the development of elaborate court
poetry set the scene for Shakespeare’s literary world. The literature produced across these two
hundred years is profoundly European, often rooted in Italian and French sources in particular,
existing in multilingual manuscripts, and explicitly engaging with international political, religious,
and cultural concerns. The literature of this period also engages with colonial and postcolonial
concerns in its engagement with the crusades (particularly in romance), with European
expansionism and encounters with different cultures (for instance in More’s
Utopia), and in its
fantasies of travel (for instance in writings by Mandeville). As you study this paper, you will be
encouraged to think about how literature in English is embedded within other literatures, and to
interrogate the periodization of ‘medieval’ and ‘renaissance’ or early modern’.
This paper covers the work of Chaucer and other major fourteenth-century writers (such as
Langland, the
Gawain-poet and Gower), as well as that of less widely-known names. Female
writers such as Margery Kempe, who travelled to Jerusalem and Rome and wrote an early
‘autobiography,’ and Julian of Norwich, an important mystic, are key literary figures in this period.
The paper also covers fifteenth-century writers (such as Hoccleve, Malory and the Older Scots
poets), and writers of the early Tudor period (such as Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey and More). One of
the most important genres across the period is drama: from the religious cycle plays, performed
in the streets of cities, to morality plays acted in the round, to household drama (such as
Medwall’s plays) acted in great halls.
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Areas for investigation include: authorship and authority; translation; vernacularity; manuscript
culture; early print culture; medieval literary theory; the performance of gender; travel writing;
autobiography; heresy and orthodoxy; chivalry; race and ethnicity; subjectivity; genre theory;
literature and kingship; literature and the marketplace. As much recent scholarship has
demonstrated, a wide range of theoretical and formalist approaches can be taken to the literature
of this period. Most colleges teach this paper in the first two terms of your second year and
regular lectures covering the literature of the period also take place during these two terms.
The paper will contain a compulsory commentary element designed to ensure that your study of
Middle English literature is accompanied by a good acquaintance with its language and registers.
The set text for this part of the paper is Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde (Riverside edition). You
may also write on Chaucer in the essay section of the exam, but discussion of his works may take
up no more than one essay (or equivalent, spread across both essays). It is not advisable to write
substantially on
Troilus and Criseyde in the essay section of the paper. Note that the Auchinleck
manuscript may be studied within this paper.
Structure of the examination
This paper is examined by a three-hour timed exam. Students will be expected to answer two
essay questions, and one commentary question.
NB: Candidates are reminded that they must not repeat material across their FHS examinations
as a whole; they must therefore carefully plan their work for this paper in combination with
their work for Paper 2 (Medieval English and Related Literatures 1066-1550).
2.7.4 Paper 4: The History of the English Language to c.1800
This paper allows students to engage with language use and aspects of language change from the
earliest stages of spoken and written English to the emergence of Late Modern English. It
introduces a range of key topics (e.g. in relation to orthography, phonology, morphology,
vocabulary, semantics, syntax) in the development of standard British English but also encourages
students to examine regional and social varieties across the history of English, as well as the wider
issues which underpin topics such as linguistic codification and control, the documentation of
variation and change, or the consequences of language contact, whether in varieties of British
English or in English abroad. It also allows students to build on some of the topics studied in
Prelims Paper 1 (e.g. advertising, news discourse, letters) within appropriate historical and
linguistic perspectives. Comparative work between periods/ types of writing/ text is encouraged.
Students must make sure that they demonstrate knowledge of language from a range of periods
in their submitted work. The course is taught by a combination of Faculty lectures and classes, and
college tutorials.
The essay questions in Section A will cover subjects such as phonology, morphology, syntax and
word order. Broader questions will also be set, but with the understanding that candidates will
use detailed linguistic knowledge as the basis of their answer.
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The commentary questions in Section B will require students to find their own passages for
analysis. Credit will be given for the choice of material as well as the quality of its analysis.
Passages must not exceed 100 lines in total (i.e.100 lines altogether, not separately). Copies of the
texts or passages used in Section B must be included as an appendix to the portfolio.
Guidelines for Paper 4 section B commentary:
i) In choosing your passages for commentary, bear in mind that you must somewhere in the paper
show knowledge of two consecutive periods from the three set for the paper (Old English, Middle
English, to c.1500, early Modern English c. 1500-c.1800). You may also find it more profitable to
compare passages that are distant in time, rather than ones which are close to one another.
ii) It is useful to translate the passages you choose before you start writing. This will help to
ensure that your examples really illustrate the feature you are discussing. It is very easy, for
instance, to confuse homographs (e.g. ME tho ‘then’ for tho ‘those’) if you do not look at the
sense of the whole sentence.
iii) Make sure that you give examples from the passages of every feature you discuss. Ensure that
your passages have line numbers and use them for reference.
iv) You should comment on features of various kinds in each passage you choose, and not
concentrate on (for example) just vocabulary or just inflexions.
v) The focus of this paper is on the more technical aspects of language; orthography, phonology,
morphology, vocabulary, semantics, syntax. Comments on rhetoric or style (more central to
papers 1-3) should at most be subordinated to these.
Structure of the Examination: Examination will be by a portfolio of two pieces of written work (of
2,000-2,500 words each) submitted at the end of term 6. The word count includes footnotes but
excludes bibliography; the word limit must be strictly adhered to. The examination paper has two
sections,
Section A (a set of discursive essay questions) and
Section B (commentary questions
which require candidates to make their own choice of passages for comment and analysis).
Candidates must answer one question from each section, making use of detailed linguistic
knowledge; comments on style/ rhetoric are not usually part of material covered by this paper.
The portfolio is to be
submitted by noon on the Thursday of Week 9 of Trinity Term of the
second year, and held over to be examined in Finals in the third year.
Optional Papers (Normally studied in Year 3)
2.7.5 Paper 5: The Material Text OR Shakespeare
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Candidates may choose one of the following:
Paper 5(a): The Material Text
This paper will allow you to study the physical and visual forms of Old English and Middle English
texts in manuscripts and other media from the Middle Ages to the present. It combines the
history of literature and language with the study of material artefacts and of their mediation in
modern printed and digital media. What – if anything – does the physical and visual form of a text
add to its content? How does it shape the text’s reception? How are texts affected by their
survival in manuscript, or their transfer to modern media? How do different media shape writing
and reading?
Half of the course involves a detailed study of two manuscripts, their texts and those texts’
modern transmission: the so-called ‘Nowell Codex’ (British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv),
dating from around 1000 and containing
Beowulf and images of marvels; and the so-called
‘Vernon Manuscript’ (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a. 1), one of the largest medieval
English books, dating from the late 1300s, and containing poetry and prose, including lyrics. Both
are available in high-quality facsimiles, which you will learn to read and analyse (the Nowell Codex
online, the Vernon manuscript in print and on DVD-Rom). Study of these books leads to a
commentary of 2,000-2,500 words on pages from your choice of one of the two, reproduced in
facsimile with or without a modern edition for comparison.
The other half of the course involves a study of medieval media in general – mostly manuscripts,
but also inscriptions and early printed books – and the modern processes of editing them in print
and digital form. Some classes will take place in the Bodleian Library with medieval manuscripts
on hand. You will write an essay of 2,000-2,500 words on a topic of your choice related to the
course of study, to allow you to focus on the two manuscripts for detailed study and/or on other
material texts of interest to you, in Old English, Middle English and/or related languages. The
materials will raise issues in topics such as, but not limited to, codicology (the physical form of
manuscripts), palaeography (the history of writing practices), medieval graphic design, the history
of reading, epigraphy (inscriptions on objects), modern editing of medieval texts, and digital
versions of medieval texts.
You may not discuss with any tutor your choice of content or the method of handling it after
Friday, Week 8 of Michaelmas Term of the third year.
Structure of the Examination: You will write a portfolio comprising: (i) a commentary of 2,000-
2,500 words on your choice of ONE of two pages in facsimile, one of the Nowell Codex, one of the
Vernon Manuscript, with or without modern edited versions for comparison; (ii) an essay of
2,000-2,500 words on a topic of your choice, to allow you to focus on the two manuscripts for
detailed study and/or on other material texts of interest to you, in Old English, Middle English
and/or related languages. The portfolio must be submitted by noon on Monday of 2nd week of
Hilary term of the third year.
OR
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Paper 5(b): Shakespeare (Course I, Paper 1)
The Shakespeare paper provides an opportunity to get to grips with an entire canon and its
contexts. Although you can study Shakespeare chronologically or generically (tracing his
development from the early plays and poems or through a genre), the exam portfolio (like your
tutorials from which the portfolio develops) provides opportunities to mix and match. Thinking
thematically, you can place early comedies with later histories (identity in
Comedy of Errors and
Henry V for example); thinking generically you can consider sonnets and poems alongside poetry
within the plays for instance. This is also a paper in which you can make full use of your reading
for Papers 3, 4 and 5 (as well as your knowledge of Victorians and the twentieth/twenty-first
centuries) to research an area such as Shakespeare and performance, political receptions, colonial
and postcolonial appropriations, cultural attitudes and uses, editorial history, the history of
specific actors and actresses, adaptations (in forms from film to novels), or literary theory. Your
teaching will cover a representative range of the canon, and you are also expected to have an in-
depth knowledge of a number of plays. There is opportunity to investigate genres and periods
(‘farce’; ‘Senecan tragedy’; ‘late style’) as well as to pursue a topic-based approach. Two of your
three portfolio examination answers will require you to address more than one work by
Shakespeare. Teaching and lecturing for the paper generally takes place in Trinity term of your
second year and Michaelmas of your third year.
Structure of the examination
The paper will be examined by a portfolio of three essays. Each essay is to be a minimum of 1500
words and a maximum of 2000 words. (The word count includes footnotes but excludes
bibliography). The portfolio is designed to make your Shakespeare topics as exciting and as
expansive as possible. This is more feasible with tutorial essays in which you choose your own
topics than it is in an exam format. Of the three essays, one can be an attempt to edit a passage
(the passage will not be included in the word total; only the glossing will count towards the word
limit); a commentary; or something similarly innovative in the scholarly canon but not catered for
in the usual exam format. (Creative writing, however, is not eligible.) There is no obligation to
include an essay that is different in this way: analytical essays in the normal format are equally
acceptable. The portfolio must be submitted by noon on Monday, Week 2 Hilary term of the third
year.
Breadth and depth
The portfolio is designed to show your depth and range as a scholar. At least two of your essays
must be on more than one work by Shakespeare (NB the Sonnets count as a single
work.) Reference to Shakespeare’s contemporaries is also encouraged: one essay may be on
the relation between Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Your portfolio will show your
depth/breadth of reading and understanding both of the Shakespeare canon and of critical
approaches to Shakespeare’s works, covering a range of texts and a variety of ways of thinking
about them.
Choosing and consulting
The three essays can be selected from your tutorial work throughout the year or they can be
written specially for the portfolio. (If written specially for the portfolio they will not be read or
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marked by your tutor.) You may rewrite your tutorial essays for submission in the light of
discussion during the tutorial and written feedback on your essay; your tutor, however, will not
discuss the revised version with you or mark it. You may choose your three essays for submission
in consultation with your tutor or independently, but you may not discuss with any tutor your
choice of content or the method of handling it after Friday, Week 8 of Michaelmas Term of the
third year.
Titles
Each essay in your portfolio must have a title. Titles take many forms. You can choose a
Shakespeare quotation. You can choose a quotation from a critic or from another early modern
writer or from a writer from any period. (Quotations from previous exam papers are permitted.)
Look at journal articles to see how they form their titles. Your title should not look like an exam
question (‘Discuss Shakespeare’s attitude to…’). The title is excluded from the word count.
Bibliography
Each essay should have its own bibliography (if appropriate to the essay). Not all essays require
bibliographies – for instance, if you are doing a close reading of language a bibliography may not
be appropriate. The bibliography is excluded from the word count.
Word Count
Each essay should total between 1500-2000 words, excluding the bibliography and title.
Footnotes are included in the word count.
2.7.6 Paper 6: Special Options
Candidates may choose one of the following:
Paper 6(a) Literature in English from 1550-1660, excluding the works of Shakespeare (Course I,
Paper 3)
Structure of the examination
This paper is examined by a three-hour timed exam. Students will be expected to answer three
essay questions.
OR
Paper 6(b) For this paper, candidates may choose from any of the options available under Course I,
Paper 6.
Structure of the examination
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One extended essay of 5,000 – 6,000 words, submitted by noon on Thursday, Week 8 in
Michaelmas Term of the third year.
OR
Paper 6(c) For this paper, candidates may choose from a
list of Course II specific topics, to be
published annually at the same time as the Course I, Paper 6 options. Options for Course II
students may include Old Norse, Medieval Welsh, Old Irish, Older Scots, Old High German,
Medieval Germanic languages, Medieval French, Medieval German, the English Language and the
Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England.
Structure of the examination
One extended essay of 5,000 – 6,000 words (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography),
submitted by noon on Thursday, Week 8 in Michaelmas Term of the third year. OR (for some
specific Course II options) by three-hour written examination at the end of Trinity Term of the
third year.
2.7.7 Paper 7: Dissertation
As for Course I students, candidates have free choice over their dissertation topic. Course II
students may take the opportunity to explore a particular interest in their period, or alternatively
might use the dissertation to study alternative periods, genres or authors not falling under the
Course II remit.
Further details may be found under the information for Course I, Paper 7
Structure of the examination
One dissertation of 7,000 - 8,000 words, submitted by noon on Tuesday, Week 9 in Hilary Term of
the third year.
Information on presentation and referencing requirements for submitted essays may be found in
section 3.5. and 3.6 of this handbook.
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