In 2024/25 the assessment pattern will be as follows:

Intermediate year:
1 x 800 word formative close reading essay deadline Term 1, Week 9 (required; submit hard copy to your seminar tutor, not through Tabula)
1 x 3000 word essay (50% of the final mark; submit through Tabula) deadline tba
1 x 2 hour closed examination taken in the summer term

Finalists:
1 x 800-1000 word formative close reading essay deadline Term 1, Week 9 (required; submit hard copy to your seminar tutor, not through Tabula)
1 x 3000 word essay (50% of the final mark; submit through Tabula) deadline tba
1 x 2 hour closed examination taken in the summer term

I: 1 x 800 word close reading essay

The close reading exercises should be submitted in hard copy directly to your seminar tutor. You should not submit them through Tabula. The first close reading exercise is due in term 1, week 9. Set texts for this exercise will be a poem or section of a poem from the module set text list and will be identified 3 weeks before the submission deadline.

II: 1 x 3,000 word essays

Intermediate year students will select 1 question from a list supplied on which they will write a 3000 word. Final year students will come up with their own questions, which must be approved by the module tutor, and will write 1 3,000 word essay. These essays must be submitted through Tabula.

Formative exercise 2024

Both intermediate and final year students should write a close analysis of 800-1,000 words of the 'Hymn to Evening' by Phillis Wheatley:

 

A Hymn to the Evening 

Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main

The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain;

Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,

Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.

Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes, 5

And through the air their mingled music floats.

Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are spread!

But the west glories in the deepest red:

So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,

The living temples of our God below! 10

Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light,

And draws the sable curtains of the night,

Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,

At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refin'd;

So shall the labours of the day begin 15

More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.

Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,

Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.

Phillis Wheatley, 1773