Early Modern Literature and Ecocriticism

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/L_ELBALES216

Course Objective

After passing this course, you will:
- be able to close read early modern literary texts;
- be familiar with the fundamentals of (historical) ecocriticism;
- be able to analyze literary texts from an ecocritical perspective;
- be able to present your analysis in a brief essay.

Course Content

In this course, we will explore the role of literature in changing relations with the natural environment in the early modern period (1550-1700). Even if we associate topics like air pollution, land grabbing, or the stripping of natural resources more readily with our current time frame, such environmental issues were encountered already in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We will be reading early modern literature from the perspective of ecocriticism, exploring how early modern texts (and images) represented and shaped the relation between humans and non-human others.

Teaching Methods

2 x 2 hours seminar per week

Method of Assessment

The final grade for this course is based Canvas assignments (50%) and a final exam (50%). You need to have a pass grade (5.5 or higher) for your final exam in order to pass the course.

Literature

Will be announced on Canvas ahead of the course.

Target Audience

This module is part of the Bachelor’s track Literature & Society: English, year 2.

Custom Course Registration

There is a slightly different enrollment procedure for this module. The standard procedure of the Faculty of Humanities has students sign up for (i) the module, and (ii) the form of tuition (lecture and/or preferred seminar group). However, for this module the instructor will assign the students to the seminar groups. Therefore, students should sign up for (i) the module, but not for (ii) the seminar groups.

Additional Information

The seminars require your active participation; attendance in the course seminars is therefore compulsory. If you are absent at more than 3 seminars (20%), you cannot pass the course. Exceptions may be made in grave personal circumstances. Make sure to inform both your lecturer and the academic advisor in such cases.

Entry Requirements

Students must have passed Literary Theory (L_ELBALES101).

Recommended background knowledge

The required level of English in this course is high. Students must be familiar with the basics of literary analysis and literary theory.