Through studying a wide range of landscape descriptions in poetry, travel writing, drama and the novel, students will learn about landscape description from aesthetic, historical, geo-humanist and geopolitical perspectives. Students will learn to identify particular movements and styles, such as the picturesque, romanticism, modernism and environmentalism in selected descriptions of places. They will also learn how place description functions in literary texts to provide not only a realistic visual setting, but through metaphor, the thoughts and feelings of characters, and the cultural and ideological outlook of the writer. The course has a practical component in which students produce place descriptions of their own and discuss these within their groups.

a wide range of landscape descriptions in poetry, travel writing, drama and the novel

landscape description from aesthetic, historical, geo-humanist and geopolitical perspectives