Late Assessment Submission Penalty  

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a mark of ‘0’ (zero) will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11.55pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical issue. This late penalty will apply to written reports and recordings only. Late submission of time sensitive tasks (such as tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, scheduled practical assessments/labs will be addressed by the unit convenor in a Special consideration application.

Delivery:

Live lectures (which are recorded) and classes start in Week 2. There is a pre-recorded Week 1 lecture, providing information to help students choose 1 of 5 Streams on different literary traditions which they study from Weeks 2 to 13.

Students are expected to attend or to listen to all recorded lectures before attending their classes each week.

On campus students: Please check the university timetable for lecture and class venues.

OUA or Online Flexible Students: Please be prepared to participate in the weekly activities via the iLearn Discussion Forums beginning in Week 2.

Readings:

This will vary, depending on choice of Stream. For more details, see Unit Schedule below or email the Unit Convenor.

The five available Streams for 2025 are:

Stream A Medieval Texts and their Modern Afterlives (taught by Prof Louise D'Arcens)

Stream B Literature and Crisis in Restoration England and Augustan Britain: Reinventing Self, Nation, Literature (Dr Geoffrey Payne) 

Stream C Victorian Poetry: Realism, Activism, Escapism (Dr Veronica Alfano)

Stream D 20th-Century Literature: Inventing the Future (Assoc Prof Paul Sheehan)

Stream E The History and Future of Australian Literature (Dr Toby Davidson)

Stream A - Medieval Texts and their Modern Afterlives (Prof Louise D’Arcens)

The medieval period (c.500-1500) enjoys a thriving afterlife in modern culture, continuing to compel us by seeming both remote and familiar - a contrast to modernity yet also a precursor or a parallel. Sometimes the Middle Ages fascinate with their apparent barbarism and oppressiveness, while elsewhere they are evoked nostalgically as a lost era of refinement and beauty. Many of our ideas about this period are responses to medieval literary texts and the changing ways in which they have been adapted. In this stream we will examine, in modern English translation, a small but significant selection of medieval texts, including the Old English epic Beowulf, vivid travel accounts from both Eastern and Western travellers, and the only literary representation of Joan of Arc from her lifetime, Christine de Pizan’s The Tale of Joan of Arc (1429). We will examine these texts within their historical contexts and then trace their changing significance across the complex afterlives they have inspired, which range across literature, screen culture, gaming, visual arts, architecture, fashion, and even tattoos. In doing this we will develop a methodology in which medieval texts are read as historical literary documents but also as participating in a dynamic process of renewal. 

Stream B - Literature and Crisis in Restoration England and Augustan Britain: Reinventing Self, Nation, Literature (Dr Geoff Payne)

In 1649, England’s civil war reached its bloody conclusion with the trial and execution of Charles I as ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer and Public Enemy.’ The first time that a European monarch had been subjected to the ultimate judicial act of censure, the shock-waves that followed took on a global resonance, as England’s political body became the epicentre of a series of political and social revolutions that reshaped the world for a modern age. Beginning with John Milton’s response to political crisis and the failure of the Commonwealth in Paradise Lost, this unit traces the literary responses to the most pressing issues of that turbulent world, engaging patterns of response that continue to influence responses to conflict and change today. Throughout the session, we seek to understand connections between technological and generic innovation in literature, study the emergence of new literary modes that address new audiences, and explore the propagandist role of literature in forging a sense of nationhood in the fracture political body of Britain that emerged from the ruin of civil and political conflict.

Stream C - Victorian Poetry: Realism, Activism, Escapism (Dr Veronica Alfano)

The Victorian period in Britain (1837–1901) witnessed sweeping social change. Mass migration to the cities and rapid technological advances created a feeling of alienation from the natural world. New scientific theories about the origins of life challenged the authority of religious faith. Debates raged about the rights and roles of women, racial minorities, and labourers—as well as the public expression of sexuality. Imperialist expansion was both embraced and critiqued. This course will investigate the ways in which poets of the time responded to these and related issues. Some felt it was their duty to hold a mirror up to society, often in order to reform it; others sought to escape contemporary culture by retreating into medieval nostalgia or by associating their work with pure beauty. As we encounter authors who wrote both from the centre and from the frontiers of Victoria’s empire (from Alfred Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Toru Dutt and Tekahionwake), we’ll consider various conceptions of the poet’s role in or out of society.   

Stream D - 20^th-Century Literature: Inventing the Future (Assoc Prof Paul Sheehan)

This Stream surveys the literature of the last century in terms of its forward-looking agendas and its poetics of invention. These qualities are then considered through the critical lens of decolonisation. The latter term highlights, first, the power structures and political schemas that are emblematic of modernity; and then, the challenges and resistances to those structures that have come to define 20^th-century literature. In the first half of the unit, the focus will be on literary modernism of the 1910s and 1920s, followed in the second half by British, American and Australian works and topics that represent a ‘late modernist’ approach to the word. Writers to be studied include W. B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Helen Garner, Philip K. Dick, Toni Morrison and J. M. Coetzee. As well as ‘traditional’ literary forms (novels, poems, short stories, plays) the stream will explore related fields of graphic journalism (Joe Sacco’s Palestine) and literary cinema (Michael Haneke’s Hidden).

Stream E - The History and Future of Australian Literature (Dr Toby Davidson)

This Stream focuses on key debates within the history of Australian literature and contemporary writers/directors addressing the global issues of today. This is particularly beneficial for future English teachers, but is designed to encourage a deeper engagement with our national literature for everyone, beyond the dull and cringy stereotypes. In the first two thirds of this Stream, influential short-form texts from colonial, Federation, postwar and late 20^th-century eras are examined through provided extracts from the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. These texts range from poetry to theatre and novel extracts, short stories, essays, manifestos, graphic novels (such as Shaun Tan’s The Arrival), film and TV. In the latter weeks, post-2020 Aust Lit and literary culture (such as national writers’ festivals and debates around AI) are investigated to weigh up how Aust Lit will be created, enjoyed, debated and taught in future. Contemporary texts studied will change over time, but there will be a particular focus on First Nations speculative fiction and film, the latter in the genre-expanding werewolf/vampire TV shows Cleverman and Firebite.