Modern British Literature and Culture I.
The purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to some aspects of 20th- and 21st-century British literature and culture. Since the fundamental cultural institutions are dealt with in a following course in the second term, besides discussing classic literary and filmic texts from a cultural studies point of view, the course will focus on investigating issues like Englishness, colonisation, gender, the impact of the two world wars, the mid-war period and the 1950s in culture. Whereas the course will primarily rely on written literary texts, it will have visual components as well, both in the form of film viewing (The Remains of the Day, Peaky Blinders, Call the Midwife) and by accompanying the written assignments with (audio)visual illustrations in class. Literary texts will include Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, George Orwell’s 1984 and Shelagh Delaney’s play A Taste of Honey.
British Civilisation
The course is designed to introduce students to British cultural history and life in modern Britain. Topics to be covered are the emergence of the British state, the structure of British society, the characteristic constituents and diversity of British identity, the political, economic, and welfare systems, the central institutions as well as the international relations of present-day Britain. In each seminar discussions focus on key concepts (such as the notions of Britishness vs. Englishness, class and manners, the myth of the countryside, the cult of amateurism, multiculturalism, the public school ethos) and questions concerning contemporary British identity and society with the help of selected images, videos, articles, short stories, films and television shows. Looking for links between past and present cultural phenomena, students shall develop a basic understanding of what it means to be British today.
Skills Development: Writing and Composition
This course introduces the student to the skills and formats of academic writing in English, leading to the types of writing expected of university students. Students practice a variety of writing formats primarily in exposition, argumentation, and critical analysis, including the following 3 pieces of writing: descriptive, comparative and argumentative essays.The second part of the course will cover research skills and writing supported by research, as well as documentation and the MLA format. Students will practice techniques of invention, organization, and revision, and will undertake such composing activities as topic selection and development, audience analysis, organization and development of ideas in short essays, grammar, spelling, and mechanics in writing. The coursework relies heavily on cooperation between students, therefore peer-review will be required and its quality will also be assessed.
Translation
The aim of the course is to familiarize students with the basic grammatical, lexical and pragmatic (stylistic, cultural) problems that may occur during translation. Accordingly, we will first cover transfer procedures like grammatical division, and grammatical and lexical concretisation, and then continue with the set phraseology, the stylistic devices and the translation of texts from various different formal and informal sources. We will also look at culture-specific issues such as the rendering of idioms and proper names. Besides translation and error finding, other exercises enhancing language competence will be included such as vocabulary-building, verb-formation, phrasal verbs etc.
Thinking the Posthuman: Hybrids, Machines and Human Beings in Literature and Film
The primary aim of this course is to provide an introduction into posthumanism and ecocriticism, and to help students develop a critical stance towards anthropocentrism. Through guided readings of texts and films, discussing a wide array of themes – such as questions of (nonhuman) sentience, the possibilities of empathy among different species, issues of human-nonhuman boundaries, hybridity, and notions of personhood – students will learn to negotiate some of the most important ideas within the fields of posthumanism and ecocriticism. Ranging from documentaries through horror stories to weird and speculative/science fiction, the novels, series episodes and movies to be analysed present a great variety of perspectives when it comes to nonhuman beings, may they be animals, plants, machines – or something in-between.
Fordítástechnika I. / Fordító és tolmács MA
A kurzus célja, hogy gyakorlatias feladatokon keresztül fejlessze a hallgatók fordítási készségeit. Fontos szempont a kifejezőkészség javítása, a fordítási technikák és segédeszközök minél alaposabb elsajátítása. A félév során a hallgatók változatos adatgyűjtési és fordítási feladatokat kapnak, egyéni és csoportos munkát is végeznek; a kiadott feladatokat közösen megvitatjuk. Külön hangsúlyt fektetünk a szótárak használatára és a szókincsfejlesztésre is.
The course surveys the most frequently occurring lexical and grammatical procedures.