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Anthropocene
•
Arthurian Literature
•
British Literature
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Classical Literature
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Epic Fantasy
•
Fantasy
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Gothic Literature
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History
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JRR Tolkien
•
Literacy
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Magic
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Metaphysics
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Monsters
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Philosophy
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Poetry
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Romanticism
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The Middle Ages
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Time Travel
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Travel Literature
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Worldbuilding
A Module in Tolkien and the Romantics
• Non-Sequential Series
Discussion-based
•
Low intensity
J.R.R. Tolkien famously 'found' his legendarium, translating and editing The Red Book of Westmarch for his twentieth century readers. This is not the first time an author has 'forged' a 'lost' literary history as James Macpherson's 'Ossian' documents from the 1760s started a craze for forgeries. Thomas Chatterton's Rowley and Turgot manuscripts similarly fed off the Ossian controversy while questioning what it really meant to 'forge' a document.
The module will follow an 8-session structure as shown below:
The module will follow an 8-session structure as shown below:
| Outline | 8-Session Structure |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Lecture 1: The 1760s, the Age of Forgery |
| Discussion 1: Which Red Book are we reading? | |
| Week 2 | Lecture 2: The Growth of Romantic Nationalism |
| Discussion 2: The Book of Lost Tales: a mythology for which England? | |
| Week 3 | Lecture 3: Oral Traditions: Immortality and Youth |
| Discussion 3: Vocalising Myth and History | |
| Week 4 | Lecture 4: Textual Traditions: Mortal Anxiety and Tangible History |
| Discussion 4: Writing myth and history |
Required Texts
There is no pre-reading required for this module and no secondary material required. All extracts from texts used throughout this Tolkien and the Romantics' module will appear on the presentations and class workbooks.
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