History of British literature after 1900

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

• Studying selected literary texts from the late nineteenth century onwards in their historical/social/cultural context;
• Developing the skill of close reading and critical analysis of literary texts with special attention to genres, forms, language, literary devices and conventions; developing the understanding of the conventions;
• Discussing major themes, problems and conventions in English literature from the nineteenth century onwards;
• Developing the ability to communicate, both in writing and orally, ideas on literary texts in a clear, precise and effective way;
• Improving the ability of employing literary terms and terminology in order to discuss literary texts;

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

• students must have high level of English required to read literary works and critical sources;
• former experience in analysing literary texts (acquired, for example, during other courses in literary or cultural studies) is welcome.

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to the course; Georgian and war poetry

Week 2: Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

Week 3: E.M. Forster: Passage to India

Week 4: Celtic Twilight and W.B. Yeats

Week 5: Modernist fiction (Virginia Woolf)

Week 6: Modernist fiction (James Joyce)

Week 7: Modernist poetry (Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden)

Week 8: George Orwell: 1984

Week 9: Poetry of the 20^th century (Heaney and Harrison)

Week 10: J. M. Coetzee:  Foe

Week 11:  Hanif Kureishi: “My Son the Fanatic”;

Week 12: Zadie Smith: “Two Men Arrive in a Village”;

Week 13: Andrea Levy: “Loose Change”;

Week 14: Hilary Mantel: “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983”;

Week 15: Revision and conclusions

Lectures:

Week 1: Introduction to the course (the aims and objectives, requirements, the final examination)

Week 2: The Aesthetic Movement

Week 3: The realist novel of the late Victorian and Ewardian period

Week 4: Late-Victorian romance

Week 5: Celtic Twilight

Week 6: The New Woman fiction and feminism

Week 7: Modernist literature: introduction

Week 8: Modernist theories on literature

Week 9: Twentieth-century drama (Angry Young Men, Theatre of the Absurd, contemporary theatre)

Week 10: Postmodern literature and historiographic metafiction

Week 11: Postcolonial literature

Week 12: (Post)Feminism and women’s fiction, from Virginia Woolf to contemporary women writers.

Week 13: Controversy and censorship: from G.B Shaw and Oscar Wilde to Salman Rushdie and Sarah Kane.

Week 14: Contemporary developments in fiction

Week 15: Revision and conclusions

Reading list

reading lists includes all the texts disussed in class