IGNOU MA English First Year Syllabus

MEG 01: British Poetry

Block I: Orientations for the Study of Poetry & the Medieval Poet Chaucer

• Unit 1: From the Evaluation of Portraits towards the Explication of Poems (1370 – 80)

• Unit 2: A Prelude to the Study of Poetry (Rhetoric & Prosody), Iambic, Trochaic, Anapest, Dactylic, Amphibrachic, Strong stress metres, quantitative metres, syllabi metres, rhythm, rhyme schemes, etc

• Unit 3: The Age of Chaucer

• Unit 4: Chaucer’s Poetry: A General Survey: Roman de la Rose, The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, Parliament of Fowls, Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales,

• Unit 5: The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

• Unit 6: ‘A Study of the Nonne Preestes Tale’ I

• Unit 7: ‘A Study of the Nonne Preestes Tale’ II

Block 2: Renaissance Poets: Undertaking a Study of Spenser

• Unit 8: The Renaissance Age

• Unit 9: Edmund Spenser

• Unit 10: Spenser’s Poetry: The Amoretti Sonnets, Sonnet 34, Sonnet 67, Sonnet 77

• Unit 11: Spenser’s Poetry – II: The Epithalamion, The Prothalamion,

Block 3: The Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert & Marvell

• Unit 12: British Poetry in the 17th Century (pre-Restoration): Historical Background, Cultural Background, The Astronomical Revolution, Spenserians (– Phineas Fletcher, Giles Fletcher, Wither, William Browne), the Cavalier Poets (- Robbert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Richard Lovelace), the Metaphysical Poets (- Henry Vaughan, Richard Crashaw, Thomas Traherne), the Early Augustans (- Edmund Waller, Sir William Davenant, Sir John Denham, Abraham Cowley)

• Unit 13: John Donne: Portrait of the Man, His Thematic and Technical Innovations and Textual Study of four Love Poems; The Flea, Twicknam Garden, The Good Morrow, The Extasie

• Unit 1 4: John Donne: Further Explorations into Poems of Love and Faith: The Canonization, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, A Nocturnal Upon S Lucies Day, Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God, Hymn To God The Father

• Unit 15: George Herbert: A Study of His Poems: Affliction, The Collar, Easter Wings, Love (3), The Pulley, Redemption, The Windows, Aaron

• Unit 16: Andrew Marvell: A Study of His Poems: To His Coy Mistress, The Garden, An Horation Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return From Ireland

Block 4: Renaissance Poets: Studying Milton

• Unit 17: The Late Renaissance

• Unit 18: Milton: The Life

• Unit 19: A Survey of Milton’s Lesser Poems & Prose: On the Death of An Infant, At A Vacation Exercise

• Unit 20: On The Morning of Christ’s Nativity & Lycidas

• Unit 21: L’Allegro, Il Penseroso &the Sonnets 19 & 23

Block 5: The Neoclassical Poets: Dryden & Pope

• Unit 22: The Age of Dryden

• Unit 23: John Dryden

• Unit 24: Mac Flecknoe, (Alexander’s Feast Or The Power of Music An Ode In Honour of St Cecilia’s Day)

• Unit 25: Pope: A Background to An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot

• Unit 26: Pope: The Study of An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot

Block 6: The Romantic Poets: Blake, Wordsworth & Coleridge

• Unit 27: Introduction to Romantic Poetry: Early Romantic Poets (- James Thomson, Mark Akenside, Joseph Warton, William Collins, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, Robert Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley & Keats)

• Unit 28: William Blake: Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience, The Lamb, The Chimney Sweeper,  The Divine Image, The Sick Rose, London, The Tyger,

• Unit 29: Wordsworth’s The Prelude, Book I: A Critical Analysis

• Unit 30: Coleridge: Kubla Khan & Dejection: An Ode

Block 7: The Second Generation Romantic Poets: Shelley & Keats

• Unit 31: The Volcanic Voice of Hope: P B Shelley

• Unit 32: A Study of The Triumph of Life

• Unit-33 Keats: Hyperion: A Fragment-I

• Unit 34: Keats: Hyperion: A Fragment, II

• Unit 35: The Romantic Age: A Review

Block 8: The Victorian Poets: Robert Browning, D G & Christina Georgiana Rossetti, Oscar Wilde

• Unit 36: The Victorian Age: Selected Studies

• Unit 37: Robert Browning: Life & Aspirations: Sordello in Mantua

• Unit 38: Robert Browning: Two Early Poems: Porphyria’s Lover, The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed’s Church

• Unit 39: Two Poems from Men and Women: Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi

• Unit 40: The Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood: Dante Gabriel Rossetti & Christina Georgina Rossetti: My Sister’s Sleep, The Blessed Damozel; Goblin Market

• Unit 41: Oscar Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Block 9: The Modernist Poets

• Unit 42: Modern British Poetry: An Introduction

• Unit 43: WB Yeats: Background, System, and Poetic Career until 1910: Adam’s Curse, No Second Troy

• Unit 44: The Later Poetry of WB Yeats: Easter 1916, Sailing To Byzantium, Lapis Lazuli

• Unit 45: T S Eliot: The Waste Land (I)

• Unit 46: T S Eliot: The Waste Land (II)

• Unit 47: T S Eliot: The Waste Land (III)

Block 10: The Modernist & Post Modernist Poets: Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, A Symposium & Essays and Evaluations

• Unit 48: Dylan Thomas: And Death Shall Have No Dominion, Poem in October, Fern Hill, A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire, Of Child in London

• Unit 49: Philip Larkin: I Remember, I Remember, Toads, Toads Revisited, Mr Bleaney, Church Going, The Whitsun Weddings, At Grass

• Unit 50: Sylvia Plath & Confessional Poetry: The Colossus, Daddy, Lasy Lazrun, Purdah, Ariel, Pursuit, The Applicant, Fever 103°

• Unit 51: So! Now! What is Poetry? Once Again: A Symposium Unit 52: Essays & Evaluations

​

​

MEG 02: British Drama

Block I: Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus

• Unit-1 Christopher Marlowe And The Elizabethan Drama

• Unit-2 The Tragic Drama of Doctor Faustus

• Unit-3 Irony And The Tragic Dilemma In Doctor Faustus

• Unit-4 The Renaissance And Reformation In Doctor Faustus

• Unit-5 Dramatic Poetry In Doctor Faustus

• Unit-6 The Performance Of Doctor Faustus

Block II: Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

• Unit-1 Background: Performance

• Unit-2 Romantic Comedy and the Language of the Play

• Unit-3 A Midsummer Night’s Dream-I

• Unit-4 A Midsummer Night’s Dream-II

• Unit-5 The Mechanicals

Block III: Shakespeare: Hamlet

• Unit-1 Background

• Unit-2 Interpretations

• Unit-3 Language of Literature

• Unit-4 Hamlet: Other Dimensions

• Unit-5 “The World As Stage”: Wider Perspective

• Unit-6 Current Critical Approaches to Hamlet

Block IV: Ben Jonson: The Alchemist

• Unit-1 The Dramatic Career of Ben Jonson

• Unit-2 Jonsonian Comedy and The Alchemist

• Unit-3 The Structure of The Alchemist

• Unit-4 The Alchemist in the Theatre

• Unit-5 Characterization and Language

Block V: John Millington Synge: The Playboy of the Western World

• Unit-1 Background to the Playboy

• Unit-2 Critical Annotations to the Playboy

• Unit-3 Close Analysis of the Playboy

• Unit-4 The Playboy: A Discussion

• Unit-5 The Playboy: A Discussion (contd.)

Block VI: George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion

• Unit-1 Background of English Drama from the Restoration Period to Bernard Shaw

• Unit-2 Pygmalion: Themes and Issues

• Unit-3 Dramatic Structure and Mingling of Genres

• Unit-4 Language and Style

Block VII: T S Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral

• Unit-1 T.S.Eliot’s Essays And Other Works Related to the Play

• Unit-2 Background, Production and Performance History

• Unit-3 Critical Approaches to Play-I

• Unit-4 Critical Approaches to Play-II

• Unit-5 General Comments and other Reading

Block VIII: John Osborne: Look Back in Anger

• Unit-1 Background to the Play

• Unit-2 The Characters

• Unit-3 Language and Speech in Look Back in Anger

• Unit-4 Critical Approaches in Look Back in Anger

• Unit-5 Anger and After: The Play’s Subsequent Importance

Block IX: Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot

• Unit-1 Waiting for Godot: An Avant-Garde Play

• Unit-2 Godot: A Critical Analysis- I

• Unit-3 Critical Analysis- II

• Unit-4 Themes and Issues- I

• Unit-5 Themes and Issues- II

​

MEG 03: British Novel

• Block I: Henry Fieldings: The History of Tom Jones A Foundling (1749)

• Block II: Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice (1813)

• Block III: Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (1847)

• Block IV: Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1860 -1861, 1861, 1862)

• Block V: George Eliot: Middlemarch (1871)

• Block VI: Josef Conrad: Heart of Darkness (1898 -1899)

• Block VII: James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man (1916)

• Block VIII: Edward Morgan Forster: A Passage to India (1912-14)

• Block IX: Muriel Sprak: The prime of Miss Jean Brodie

​

MEG 04: Aspects of Language

• Block I: What is Language?

• Block II: A History of the English Language

• Block III: Phonetics & Phonology I

• Block IV: Phonetics & Phonology II

• Block V: English Syntax

• Block VI: Language In Use – I

• Block VII: Language In Use – II

• Block VIII: The Spread of English

• Block IX: Stylistics