Modern and Contemporary Literature
| Code | School | Level | Credits | Semesters |
| ENGL2008 | English | 2 | 20 | Spring UK |
- Code
- ENGL2008
- School
- English
- Level
- 2
- Credits
- 20
- Semesters
- Spring UK
Summary
‘On or about December 1910 human character changed’, so wrote Virginia Woolf in 1924. ‘And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics and literature.’ This module will familiarize students with relevant aesthetic, generic, and literary-historical strategies for tracing formal and thematic transformations in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature. Moving between genres, the module will unfold chronologically from modernism, through the inter-war years, and into the ‘contemporary scene’ (as notionally defined for literature since 1970) up to the present day. Lectures and seminars will address some key phases of creative transition, while also particularizing the work of representative novelists, essayists, short-story writers and poets. This combination of overview and textual scrutiny will encourage students to explore influences and affinities between writers working in different modes and periods. Weekly topics will primarily be concerned with mapping literary formations and innovations within the artistic and cultural contexts from which they emerge, while also addressing the wider aesthetic and ideological significances of issues such as class, gender, sexuality and race.
Target Students
Only available to second-year students on SH and JH English programmes, including 2+2 programmes; students participating in exchanges from the School partner institutions; and second or third-year students on the Liberal Arts programme.
Classes
- One 1-hour seminar each week for 10 weeks
- One 2-hour lecture each week for 10 weeks
Assessment
- Coursework 1: Formative essay plan and bibliography
- 100% Coursework 2: A 3000-word essay, submitted at the end of semester
Assessed by end of spring semester
Educational Aims
This module aims to provide students with: an introduction to the different transitions and innovations in form across narrative fiction and poetry from 1910 to the present day; an introduction to the cultural and historical contexts across which broader literary and artistic movements (including modernism, impressionism, and realism) are formed and refashioned; the analytical skills to pinpoint and debate key social, cultural, and political issues of the period in relation to the literary genres studied; to consider self-reflexively the use of generic terms and classifications, while exploring the limitations and advantages of literary-historical periodization.Learning Outcomes
Knowledge and Understanding:
- knowledge and understanding of the literary, political, and cultural contexts for selected fiction, non-fiction and poetry from the period 1910 to the present day (A2)
- the ability to bring different genres into adjacency in order to understand the intersecting impulses and priorities characteristic of any given period (A2).
Intellectual Skills:
- the ability to think independently while using secondary criticism and cultural history in ways that substantiate a focused commentary on literary form (B1, B2)
- to display a self-reflexive awareness of current strategies for contextualizing transitions in the practices of poetry and prose (B1, B2)
- to appreciate the implications of embarking on comparative readings of different genres within a given period (B1, B2).
Professional Practical Skills:
- the ability to write accurately and grammatically and present written work according to the conventions appropriate to literary study (C3, C5)
- the ability to construct and communicate a sustained analysis of texts in writing; the ability to place individual research alongside the work of previous scholars (C3, C5).
Conveners
- Dr Sarah Davison
- Dr Andrew Steven Harrison