This course introduces literature as cultural and historical phenomena. This entails a study of history of various periods of English Literature from Renaissance to the present. The course also, very briefly, touches upon different theoretical approaches to literature to introduce the student to literary critique and evaluation. A general understanding of literary theory as a broad field of philosophical concepts and principles is also crucial to the understanding of literary piece.
1. To study the history and practice of English as a scholarly discipline.
2. To study the history and development of each genre through excerpts of literary texts.
3. To do close reading of texts and analyze them with different critical frameworks.
4. To analyze and criticize the works of literature in their cultural and historical contexts.
5. To assess the influence of literary movements in Britain on English literature from all parts of the world.
1. William Henry Hudson. Introduction to the Study of Literature (1913)
2. Andrew Sanders. The Short Oxford History of English Literature(1994)
3. Mario Klarer. Introduction to Literary Studies (1999)
4 J. H. Miller. On Literature (2002)
Note: The teacher will use Sander’s history with any one of the three books on literature as core texts.
- Albert, E. (1979). History of English Literature (5th ed.). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
- Alexander, M. (2000). A History of English Literature. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Blamires, H. (1984). A Short History of English Literature. London: Routledge.
- Carter, R., & McRae, J. (1997). The Routledge History of Literature in English, Britain and Ireland.London: Routledge.
- Chin, B. A., Wolfe, D., Copeland, J., & Dudzinski, M. A. (2001). Glencoe Literature: British Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
- Compton-Rickett, A. (1912). A History of English Literature. London: T. C. and E. C. Jack.
- Daiches, D. (1968). A Critical History of English Literature. London: Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd.
- Fletcher, R. H. (1919). A History of English Literature. Boston: R. G. Badger.
- Legouis, E., & Cazamian, L. (1960). A History of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent and Sons.
Language is central to human experience. This course provides a comprehensive overview of language origin, evolution of language as human faculty, and traces the history of English language in order to provide an idea how languages developed. The part on the history of the English language covers story of English language from beginning to the present. The course also includes a brief introduction of the history of linguistics with special reference to various schools of thought that have contributed significantly to the development of Linguistics.
This course aims to:
- Give students a comprehensive overview of language as human faculty.
- Familiarize students with different stories about the origin of language.
- Provide students an overview of how a language develops through a comprehensive exposure to English language development.
- Enable students to identify major theoretical formulations in the development of linguistics.
- Language Origin
- Language as a divine gift
- Natural sound source theories
- Social interaction source theories
- The Physical adaptation sources
- The genetic source
- Speech vs Writing
- Primacy of speech
- Speech vs. Writing
- Origin of writing
- Types of writing systems
- Language as Human Faculty
- Human Language vs animal communication
- Characteristics of Language: Design features
- Animals lack language: A controversy
- Language Families
- What is a language family?
- Language Families in the World: A Brief Overview
- Historical Linguistics
- What is linguistics?
- What is historical linguistics?
- What does historical linguistics study? (phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic changes)
- Methods of Language reconstruction
Evolution of English Language
- Old & Middle English Periods
- Grammatical categories
- Grammatical gender
- Old, Middle, and Modern English (grammatical categories)
- 18th Century
- Major characteristics of the age
- Problem of refining and fixing the language
- Swift’s proposal
- Johnson’s Dictionary
- Vocabulary formation
- Introduction of passives
- 19th Century
- Important events and influences
- Sources of new words
- Pidgins and Creoles
- Spelling reforms
- Development of Dictionary
- Verb-adverb combination
- English Language in America
- Archive Features
- Difference between the British and American English
Development of Modern Linguistics
- Modern Linguistics
- Emergence of Modern Linguistics: Saussure
- American Structuralism
- The Prague School
- Contemporary Approaches to Linguistics
- Functional Linguistics
- Bough, A.C. & Cable, T. (2002). A History of English Language. London: Prentice Hall, Inc.
- Campbell, L. (2001), ‘The history of linguistics’, in M. Aronoff and J. Rees-Miller (eds),The Handbook of Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 81-104.
- Joseph, J.E. (2002), From Whitney to Chomsky: essays in the history of American linguistics.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- Yule, George. (2006). The Study of Language: 4th/ 5th Edition, Cambridge University Press.
This course explores speech sounds as physical entities (phonetics) and linguistic units (phonology). In viewing sounds as physical elements, the focus is on articulatory description. In this part of the course, the goal is to learn to produce, transcribe, and describe in articulatory terms many of the sounds known to occur in human languages. In the next part of the course, the focus is on sounds as members of a particular linguistic system.
This course aims to:
- assist students learn a number of technical terms related to the course
- familiarize students with sounds and sound patterning, particularly in English Language
- develop knowledge of segmental and supra-segmental speech
- help students understand the features of connected speech
- Basic definitions
- Articulatory, Auditory & Acoustic Phonetics
- Minimal pairs
- Organs of Speech
- Consonants(place and manner of articulation)
- Vowels (vowel trapezium/quadrilateral)
- Rules of Voicing
- Rules of /r/
- Rules of /ŋ/
- Practice of phonemic transcription
- Fluency Devices
- Weak forms/Strong forms
8. Sound Values
9. Stress and Intonation
10. Practice of phonemic transcription
- Collins, B. and Mees, I. (2003) Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A Resource Book for Students. London & NY: Routledge (Taylor & Francis)
- Clark, J and Yallop, C. (1995). An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. 2nd edition. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell.
- Davenport, Mike & S. J. Hannahs. (2010). Introducing Phonetics & Phonology, 3rd edition. Hodder Education
Roach, Peter. (2009). English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course. 4th Edition. Cambridge.
This course covers two foundational schemes regarding the study of literature: 1) Forms, and 2) Movements. The term “forms” refer to the study of literary genres and their subtypes in such a way as to introduce the students to their structures and styles with its focus on the following:
1) Poetry; 2) Fiction; 3) Drama; 4) Prose/Non-fiction; and 5) Short Story. The term “movement” is rather loosely used to characterize literary texts produced in different cultures under the influence of or for the propagation of certain ideas as their hallmarks/signatures. The course has been designed to intellectually groom the students for a broad understanding of the major literary movements in the history of world literature, especially British and American: Idealism (Greek), Renaissance/Early Modern, Neoclassicism, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Victorianism, Raphaelitism, Realism, Transcendentalism, Modernism, Colonialism, Symbolism, Imagist and post-Colonialism, Feminism and post-Feminism.
- Build students’ capacity for grasping the meaning of a literary text in terms of a given historical period/dominant idea.
- Develop their ability for understanding the major ideas that played a key role in shaping the works of different groups of writers.
- Provide them with a workable tool for interpreting and analyzing a literary text.
|Berman, Art. Preface to Modernism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994. |
Dirks, B Nicholos. Colonialism and Culture. Michigan: Michigan Univ Press. 1992.
Fowler, Alastair. Kinds of Literature : An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Oxford: Clarenden, 2002.
Galea, Ileana. Victorianism and Literature. California. Dacia, 2008.
Gura, Philip. American Transcendentalism. NP: Farrar, 2008.
Hagger, Hagger. A New Phlsophy of World Literature. The Universlaist Literary Tradtion. Ropley: John Hunt Publishing, 2004.
Hooks, Bell. Feminist Theory. London: Pluto Press, 2000.
Hudson, William Henry. An Introduction to the Study of Literature. New Delhi : Rupa, 2015.
Marcuse, J Michael. Arefence Guide for English Studies. Los Angeles: Univ of California Press, 1990.
Osborne, Susan. Feminism. NP: Product Essentials, 2001.
Philips, Jerry , Andrew Ladd, and K H Meyers. Romanticism and Transcendentalism. New York: DWJ Books: 2010.
Tandon, Neeru. Feminism: A Paradigm Shift. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2008.