ESH6056 - Magical Narratives: Transformations of Romance - 2024/25

From Parzival to Skyfall, The Eve of St Agnes to The Waste Land, romance is a genre which embraces some of the greatest works of literature as well as being a vehicle for some of its most seductive fictions. With its tantalising mix of magic and realism, its love of binary oppositions and its rich intertextuality, romance has also been a focus for modern theories of genre, attracting the attention of structuralist and poststructuralist critics such as Vladimir Propp, Northrop Frye, Fredric Jameson and Patricia Parker. This module traces the evolution of romance from medieval to modern times, examining magical narratives in verse, prose, drama and film while using modern genre theory to help explain the persistence and transformation of the genre. Among the authors studied are Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Jane Austen, Keats, T.S. Eliot and David Lodge. The module concludes with the James Bond film franchise as a modern reincarnation of romance.