This element of the portfolio is a critical essay that requires you to demonstrate your understanding of a theoretical idea or position by discussing it in relation to two primary texts, at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit. Your essay must make reference to theoretical material as well as the primary texts you are using. Your work must be referenced using the MHRA referencing system using footnotes or endnotes AND a bibliography. The bibliography is not included in the wordcount for the work.

2800-3100 words range

MHRA Referencing

Footnotes and Bibliography list

PLEASE NOTE: Deadline 24/4/2018 12:00 pm UK time

Essay Questions:

• ‘Any belief that the study of literature is the study of a stable, well-definable entity […] can be abandoned […] Literature, in the sense of a set of works of assured and unalterable value, distinguished by certain shared inherent properties, does not exist.’ (Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, p9.)

How useful are these ideas to a discussion of canonicity and literary value? Demonstrate your interpretation with reference to two primary texts, at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit.

• ‘Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of others.’ (Ferdinand de Saussure, in Rivkin and Ryan, p. 66.)

What do you understand by this statement? Demonstrate your interpretation with reference to two primary texts, at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit. [Nb. In this instance one of the texts might be a selection of adverts studied – please consult your tutor for guidance].

-‘To give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.’ (Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in
Image, Music, Text, p. 147).

Discuss the ways in which two primary texts, at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit, challenge the idea of the author as the source of a text’s meaning

• ‘[A] text is […] a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations.’ (Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Image, Music, Text, p. 146).

Discuss the intertextual elements of two primary texts, at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit.

• ‘If there is an unconscious process it will be at work all the time, not just in spectacular one-off occasions […] It will be a kind of lining on the other side of normal, waking consciousness which might not be noticed unless there was an effect over and above anything rational consciousness might expect and can explain’ (Antony Easthope, The Unconscious, p.2).

Demonstrate some of the ways in which theories of psychoanalysis can be used for the analysis of texts. Your answer should make reference to two primary texts at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit.

• ‘[T]he capitalist economy is first and foremost a power structure.’ (Glynn Daly, The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory, p. 38).

What do you understand this statement to mean? Illustrate your answer with reference to two primary texts at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit.

• ‘Under a patriarchal regime women are, by definition, excluded from positions of power and authority – except where that power or authority works to support individual men or the social system as a whole.’ (Anne-Cranny-Francis et al, ‘Ways of Talking’, in Gender Studies: Terms and Debates, p. 15).

Demonstrate your understanding of this statement by applying it to an analysis of two primary texts, at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit.

• ‘[I]t is the colonized man who wants to move forward and the colonizer who holds him back.’ (Aimee Cesaire, From Discourse on Colonialism, p. 179)

What do you understand this statement to mean? You should illustrate your answer with close reference to two primary texts, at least one of which must be a text studied on this unit.

• ‘It [queer theory] is radically anti-essentialist theory, arguing that everything – desire, sexual norms and gender, certainly – is interpretable as social construction and open to challenge and change.’ (Donald E. Hall, The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory, p. 112).

Discuss and demonstrate this definition of queer theory with reference to two primary texts, at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit.

• ‘[R]epresentations of disability may often be more about reinforcing normality than an interest in disability itself.’ (Tom Shakespeare, Help, p.6)

How useful is this statement in understanding representations of disability? Illustrate your answer with reference to two primary texts at least one of which must be a text studied on the unit

Unit eligible texts:

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