Linguistics and Literary Criticism

Literary Linguistics

In this course, Professor Peter Stockwell (University of Nottingham) demonstrates the power of literary linguistics through of series of close readings of literary texts. In the first module, we provide an introduction to literary linguistics by looking at John Donne's 'No Man is an Island' (1624). After that, in the second module, we think about metaphors in literature, focusing in particular on Romeo's comment that 'Juliet is the sun'. In the third module, we think about the sound of literature – and to some extent its physicality – by looking at two poems by Robert Browning: The Lost Leader (1845) and 'In A Gondola' (1842). In the fourth module, we think about voice in literature through Seamus Heaney's 'Mid-Term Break' (1966), before turning in the fifth module to consider the concept of 'mind-modelling', focusing in particular on the ending of E. Nesbit's The Railway Children (1906). Finally, in the sixth module, we think about Michael Halliday's concept of systemic functional grammar, focusing on three texts that display very different 'process types': John W. Campbell's The Brain Stealers of Mars (1952; material processes); Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong (1994; relational processes) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897; mental processes).

Linguistics and Literary Criticism

In this module, we provide an introduction to literary linguistics by looking at John Donne's 'No Man is an Island' (1624). As we move through the module, we consider: (i) the different ways we can approach the text: grammatically or syntactically; ideologically; as an argument or piece of rhetoric; from a feminist viewpoint; from a personal point of view; in its historical context; (ii) the language and grammar of the text: its syntactic balance, the tension between its positive overall message with its negative vocabulary ('death', 'diminish', 'wash away', etc.); the unusualness of the metaphor that runs through the text; its sound patterning, especially in the penultimate line; and (iii) the extent to which the text has been recontextualised since it was first published in 1624.