Literature in an English Language Degree

1. Literature in an English Language Degree Richard Steadman-Jones

2. Language and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Literature English Language and Linguistics English Language and Literature

3. Stylistics?

4. Well yes, but… • To do literary stylistics well presupposes a good understanding of literature. • It also relies on students having an interest in literature for its own sake. • And – perhaps not so important? – it has a strange status with literature colleagues.

5. Five Questions • How do literary texts represent spontaneous talk? • How do literary texts handle narrative? • What makes literary language ‘literary’? • How is literature used in studying the history of English? • What do literary texts have to say about language?

6. NIJO. You couldn’t say I was inactive. I walked every day for twenty years. ISABELLA. I don’t mean walking. / I mean in the head. NIJO. I vowed to copy five Mahayana sutras. / Do you know how MARLENE. I don’t think religious beliefs are something we have in common. Activity yes. NIJO. long they are? My head was active. / My head ached. JOAN. It’s no good being active in heresy. ISABELLA. What heresy? She’s calling the Church of England / a heresy. JOAN. There are some very attractive / heresies. NIJO. I had never heard of Christianity. Never / heard of it. Barbarians. MARLENE. Well I’m not a Christian. / And I’m not a Buddhist.

7. They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.

8. The sausage for the rolls must be fried over very low heat, so that it cooks thoroughly without getting too brown. When done, remove from the heat and add the sardines, which have been deboned ahead of time. Any black spots on the skin should also have been scraped off with a knife. Combine the onions, chopped chiles, and the ground oregano with the sardines. Let the mixture stand before filling the rolls.

9. Tita enjoyed this step enormously; while the filling was resting, it was very pleasant to savour its aroma, for smells have the power to evoke the past, bringing back sounds and even other smells that have no match in the present. Tita liked to take a deep breath and let the characteristic smoke and smell transport her through the recesses of her memory.

10. How condescending and how kind Was God's eternal Son! Our mis'ry reach'd his heav'nly mind, And pity brought him down. When justice, by our sins provoked, Drew forth its dreadful sword, He gave his soul up to the stroke, Without a murm'ring word.

12. Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles in the Times were written in it but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050.