Modern and Contemporary Literature

Code School Level Credits Semesters
ENGL2033 English 2 20 Spring Malaysia
Code
ENGL2033
School
English
Level
2
Credits
20
Semesters
Spring Malaysia

Summary

‘On or about December 1910 human character changed’, 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 literature from 1910 to 1960. Moving between genres, the module will unfold chronologically from modernism, through the inter-war and post-war years. Lectures and seminars will address some key phases of creative transition, while also focusing on the work of representative novelists, poets, and dramatists. 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 reformation, gender identity, racial integration, and social belonging.

Target Students

Compulsory for Level 2 BA English Language and Literature and BA English with Creative Writing students. Available to International Communication Studies with English Literature and Language students. Available to exchange students from colleges with agreements with the School of English. Further info: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/prospective/international/exchangestudents.aspx. Available to JYA/Erasmus students.

Classes

Activities may take place every teaching week of the Semester or only in specified weeks. It is usually specified above if an activity only takes place in some weeks of a Semester

Assessment

Educational Aims

This module aims to provide students with: an introduction to the different transitions and innovations in form across British and American narrative fiction, poetry, and drama from 1910 to 1960; an introduction to the cultural and historical contexts across which broader literary and artistic movements 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:

  • to be able to define and illustrate the formal and thematic characteristics of writing from across the period;
  • to be able to place authors and their work in relation to their literary, political, and cultural contexts;
  • to be able to compare literature of different genres from across the period, accounting for thematic and stylistic intersections and variations;

    Intellectual skills

  • the ability to think independently while giving due weight to the arguments of others
  • the ability to understand complex ideas, and relate them to specific problems or questions
  • the ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary texts;

    Professional practical skills

  • the ability to communicate effectively in writing and in classroom discussion;
  • the ability to present a logical and sustained argument;
  • the ability to conduct research, evaluating and employing secondary sources in a scholarly manner;

    • Conveners

    View in Curriculum Catalogue
    Last updated 09/01/2025.