EU0384: Post Civil War Fiction 1

School null
Department Code null
Module Code EU0384
External Subject Code R420
Number of Credits 20
Level L6
Language of Delivery English
Module Leader Dr Craig Patterson
Semester Spring Semester
Academic Year 2013/4

Outline Description of Module

The module seeks to introduce students to novels that are representative of the socio-cultural and political context of Francoist Spain during the 1940s and 50s and the aftermath of the fratricidal conflict. It will analyse the strategies that writers adopted as cultural practitioners within a dictatorship, and assess their representation of Spanish society from 1939. It also focuses on the innovatory techniques employed by writers in such circumstances, and evaluates their contributions to Spanish literary production in the later part of the twentieth century and beyond.

On completion of the module a student should be able to

  • Show perceptions of main issues relevant to the development of Spanish narrative during the Franco dictatorship through the study of representative novels, and be able to discuss and write about the selected narratives in the context of historical and cultural discourses of post-Civil War Spain.
  • demonstrate familiarity with basic concepts of narratology, cultural history, textual analysis, anti-censorship strategies and Postmodernism.
  • demonstrate capacity for analysing and interpreting complex literary texts and socio-historical context in the field of study covered by the module, using appropriate terminology.

How the module will be delivered

Weekly seminars in which students offer a presentation in pairs upon a given aspect of the works in question, before taking part in a discussion of themes that arise from this, and engaging in a close-reading of the texts.

Skills that will be practised and developed

Students will gain the practical ability to: think and speak clearly about cultural history and literature. Write critically about cultural history and literature. Apply these ideas to extrinsic models.

SUBJECT SPECIFIC

Understand the role of literature in modern Spain. Analyse, discuss and write critically upon an aspect of modern Spanish literature, and its implications within contemporary cross-cultural and political parameters.

EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS

Think and communicate clearly about literature and culture in general. Give and receive constructive criticism concerning complex ideas through the medium of group seminars and presentations. Research topics of a challenging intellectual nature and present their findings through the construction of a clear and well-written analytical argument.

How the module will be assessed

Type of assessment

 

%

Contribution

Title

Duration
(if applicable)

Approx. date of Assessment

Essay

30

 

2000

May

Exam

70

 

2 hours

June

Assessment Breakdown

Type % Title Duration(hrs)
Written Assessment 30 Post Civil War Fiction I N/A
Exam - Spring Semester 70 Post Civil War Fiction I 2

Syllabus content

The module seeks to introduce students to novels that are representative of the socio-cultural and political context of Francoist Spain during the 1940s and 50s and the aftermath of the fratricidal conflict. It will analyse the strategies that writers adopted as cultural practitioners within a dictatorship, and assess their representation of Spanish society from 1939. It also focuses on the innovatory techniques employed by writers in such circumstances, and evaluates their contributions to Spanish literary production in the later part of the twentieth century and beyond.

This overview of literary achievements in Spain during the decades immediately following the Civil War will examine a broad range of topics. Through the delivery format of seminar presentation and discussion, students will be able to shape their contribution to the module and carry out their own research related to their assessments and interests.

It seeks to familiarise students with procedures such as: pictorial and impressionistic description as a form of representation; the appeal to cultural archetypes in the construction of intimate meaning; the structures and semantic content of literary language in the expression of Postmodernism; the use of cultural artefacts in literary meditation on history; literary characterisation as the exemplification of larger philosophical patterns and the intellectual formation of the literary protagonist. As well as perennial philosophical themes represented in these works, students will consider the more focussed questions of narrative technique and point of view, the relationship between author, reader, narrator and protagonist, manifestations of metafiction in Spanish literature and its concern with authorship, and the literary investigation into the nature of truth and reality.

Essential Reading and Resource List

Primary Sources:

Camilo José Cela. La familia de Pascual Duarte(1942).

Carmen Laforet. Nada (1945).

Camilo José Cela. La Colmena (1951).

Juan Goytisolo. Duelo en el paraíso (1955).

Secondary Sources:

Jordan, Barry. Writing and politics in Franco’s Spain(London: Routledge, 1990).

Labanyi, Jo. Myth and History in the Contemporary Spanish Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Preston, Paul. Franco (London: Fontana, 1995).

Thomas, Gareth. The Novel of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1975) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Modernism/Postmodernism. Ed. Peter Brooker (Longman: London, 1992).

A full list of journal articles will be provided in the course kit for this module.


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