Postgraduate Course: Propaganda in Renaissance Scotland (PGHC11345)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course studies the propaganda generated by the political and religious controversies of the sixteenth century in Scotland. Propaganda can be defined as public statements deliberately designed to persuade a target audience to take controversial public action or to support a controversial public cause. The ballads, libels, tracts, broadsides and ritual actions that emerged from the competing parties may have been among the first instances of propaganda in Scotland. |
| Course description |
'Propaganda' is an inescapable phenomenon of the modern world. This course is a case-study in how propaganda began. Propaganda, in the sense of public statements deliberately designed to persuade a target audience to take controversial public action or to support a controversial public cause, seems largely to have arisen with the political and religious disputes of the sixteenth century. This course studies the early propaganda that arose in sixteenth-century Scotland. It focuses, not so much on the content of controversial exhortations, as on the media by which they were delivered and the structures of the arguments that they used. Renaissance propaganda could be fiction or non-fiction, verse or prose, written or oral; it could incorporate drama or music; and it need not be textual at all - visual imagery or ritual actions could also be propaganda. The course investigates these media by means of primary sources.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Assessed work comprises a 3,000-word essay (on a topic agreed in advance between student and course organiser) and a short written report on a primary document. The written report is also circulated via LEARN and discussed in seminars, but the assessment is of the written report rather than the oral presentation of it. These two items are weighted at 90 per cent for the essay and 10 per cent for the report. |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate in online forum posts and by essay a detailed and critical command of the body of knowledge concerning propaganda in Renaissance Scotland
- Demonstrate in online forum posts an ability to analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship and primary source materials concerning propaganda in Renaissance Scotland, and conceptual discussions about the nature and functions of propaganda
- Demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form in seminar discussions, presentations, and online forum posts by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course
- Demonstrate in seminar discussions, presentations, and online forum posts originality and independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers; and a considerable degree of autonomy
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Reading List
Amy Blakeway, 'The response to the Regent Moray's assassination', Scottish Historical Review, 88 (2009), pp. 9-33
Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, trans. Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner (New York: Vintage, 1973)
Crawford Gribben and David G. Mullan (eds.), Literature and the Scottish Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009)
Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (6th edn., Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 2015)
Mark Loughlin, '"The Dialogue of the Twa Wyfeis": Maitland, Machiavelli and the propaganda of the Scottish civil war', in A. A. MacDonald, Michael Lynch and Ian B. Cowan (eds.), The Renaissance in Scotland (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 226-45
Alasdair A. MacDonald, 'Early modern Scottish literature and the parameters of culture', in Sally L. Mapstone and Juliette Wood (eds.), The Rose and the Thistle: Essays on the Culture of Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1998), pp. 77-100
Tricia A. McElroy, 'Imagining the "Scottis natioun": populism and propaganda in Scottish satirical broadsides', Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 49 (2007), pp. 319-39
John J. McGavin, Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)
Alastair J. Mann, The Scottish Book Trade, 1500-1720 (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2000)
Roger Mason, 'Covenant and commonweal: the language of politics in Reformation Scotland', in Norman Macdougall (ed.), Church, Politics and Society: Scotland, 1408-1929 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983), pp. 97-126
Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
James E. Phillips, Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth-Century Literature (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1964) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Propaganda Renaissance Scotland |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Julian Goodare
Tel: (0131 6)50 4021
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: |
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