Literary History Project: Student Group Oral Presentation

Each student group will research the scholarly generalizations that have been made in the literary histories that have been placed on reserve about one of the following periods:

The Early Renaissance

Later Renaissance: 17^th Century

Restoration and Neoclassical Period

Romantic Period

Victorian Period

Early Modern Period

Late Modern Period

Postcolonial Period

The presentation should be made in class on the first day of daily reading in the period. The report should be a joint presentation, about 8-10 minutes long, with a bibliography of the sources used. You must use at least one of the resources on reserve in the library. You may also use other resources, internet or otherwise, so long as they are clearly documented in the handout.

The purpose of the presentation is to convey to the rest of the class some (or even one) of the scholarly generalizations of a literary period. These generalizations can be about the literature only or about the cultural products of the period or about the overall movement and ideology of the period which would then, in theory, dictate the contours of the period.

In summary, on the day of the presentation, your group should have a handout -- one to two pages in length -- that must contain a bibliography, desirable additions to that bibliography are an outline of topics in the presentation, illustrative and exemplary quotations.

Then, having handed out the deliverables, the group can make the presentation, with members of the group sharing equal time making the actual presentation. To achieve this parity, the group can either simply divided the presentation into equal parts for the members to present, or the group may have one person be the main presenter and the others providing supplementary and ancillary materials, with an effort, however, that is clearly and demonstrably commensurate to that of the principle presenter.