Course Resources Archive

This module will introduce students to the genres of myth and drama as foundational modes of knowledge, appropriate to the study of English literature. The module is compulsory for the Single Honours degree award.

The yearlong (double) module introduces students to the modes of myth and drama that articulate symbolic stories underpinning the English and European literature, often at a deep or hidden level. Students will learn to recognise myth within a range of diverse genres, including the folk tale and national narratives such as the saga and epic. In the second semester, we will apply our insights on myth and ritual to the study of drama, and investigate how the genre develops from the classical to medieval stage to modern incarnations of these ancient stories. In both parts of the module, we will consider the implications of translation, adaptation and cultural inheritance, as ancient texts, ideas and practices are reconfigured and reinterpreted in a continuous process. Texts may include, but are not limited to, the following: Ovid, Metamorphoses; Grimm’s tales; Norse myth; Beowulf; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex and Antigone; Seneca, Medea; Second Shepherd’s Play; Everyman; Anouilh, Wertenberger, and Caryl Churchill.

On completing this module successfully you, the student, should be able to do the following:

1. Demonstrate a good knowledge of myth and drama and be able to identify mythic patterns from a wide variety of texts across genres and historical periods
2. Read closely, analyse and evaluate a number of key texts and to gain a sense of continuities and differences between them
3. Develop an intellectual framework for understanding literature and its cultural and historical contexts as part of the academic discipline of ‘English’, and how these contexts shape literary production, both written and oral
4. Apply techniques of sustained evidence-based reasoning and appropriate research to pieces of written work for assessment
5. Demonstrate confidence in communicating and exchanging ideas in a seminar context, and to reflect critically on your learning.

The Library Catalogue contains full details of the current reading list for this module. Further details may also be found in the Module Guide.