This module requires students to explore and evaluate a specific text and its reception in a range of contexts. It develops students’ understanding of questions of textual integrity.
Each elective in this module requires close study of a single text to be chosen from a list of prescribed texts.
Students explore the ideas expressed in the text through analysing its construction, content and language. They examine how particular features of the text contribute to textual integrity. They research others’ perspectives of the text and test these against their own understanding and interpretations of the text. Students discuss and evaluate the ways in which the set work has been read, received and valued in historical and other contexts. They extrapolate from this study of a particular text to explore questions of textual integrity and significance.
Students develop a range of imaginative, interpretive and analytical compositions that relate to the study of their specific text. These compositions may be realised in a variety of forms and media.
“The universality of Hamlet relies on the timelessness of its thematic preoccupations of death and identity.”
Misc Quotes- Thanks BOS
• “Hamlet’s nature is philosophical, reflective, prone to questioning and therefore aware of the larger moral implications of any act” – Mary Slater
• “Hamlet’s self questionings are mere pretexts to hide his lack of resolve” – William Alice
• “Hamlet is full of weakness and melancholy” – William Hazlitt
• “Hamlet is a man of painful sensitivity” – F. Richmond
• Hamlet continually resolves to do but does nothing but resolve – S.T Coleridge
• “He lives entirely for himself; he is an egotist” – I. Turgenev
• “He is a success, for he gets his man, and a failure, for he leaves eight bodies, including his own, where there was meant to be one” – B. Nightingale.
• A.C. Bradley: “The playwright always