SE2445: Modernist Fictions

School English Literature
Department Code ENCAP
Module Code SE2445
External Subject Code 100319
Number of Credits 20
Level L6
Language of Delivery English
Module Leader Dr Carrie Smith
Semester Spring Semester
Academic Year 2022/3

Outline Description of Module

This module offers an in-depth study of some the most exciting key modernist fictions. Moving from the beginning of the twentieth century to World War II, we will study what renders British and Irish novels modern. Our readings will approach the period from a number of analytical frames. We will look at the detective story as it takes a modernist turn in the context of revolution, the modernist epic and the central novels that chart the experience of everyday life: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) and James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). We will consider spatial mappings of empire and gender, and take up linguistic explorations of traumatic experience. Finally, in the work of Beckett, we will consider a novel that rejects the novel itself as a staid or worn-out genre. All of these approaches will examine how the historical climate of the early twentieth century gave rise to new ways of representing modern experience in narrative forms. Through sustained close reading and a sensitivity to literary influence and context, we will explore these wilful, brilliant, funny and sometimes challenging texts.

On completion of the module a student should be able to

On completion of the module students should have a deep and broad knowledge of the texts on the course. They should be able to think about the period analytically, to undertake close readings of the set texts, and to locate them in their literary contexts, while making wider associations across the course as a whole.

  • discuss and analyse a range of modernist texts by British and Irish writers
  • compare key modernist political and cultural ideas
  • analyse key literary texts in relation to these ideas
  • evaluate the various forms that modernist fictions assume.

How the module will be delivered

This module will be delivered through a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous activities, as part of this programme’s blended provision, which will include on-campus and online teaching and support.

The precise mode of delivery and details – subject to Welsh Government and Public Health Wales guidance – of the teaching and support activities will be made available at the start of the semester via Learning Central.

Skills that will be practised and developed

Academic skills: Students will become familiar with the techniques and tools of close reading and textual analysis, enhancing the ability to assimilate knowledge of a variety of modernist tropes, themes and formal techniques. This will call for sensitivity to the use of language, as well as literary and historical awareness. Critical thinking, interdisciplinary skills, the successful integration of theoretical material into an analysis of a text and the formulation of concise and effective argumentation will all be vital critical tools utilised during this module. 

Employability skills: these include the ability to synthesise information, participate in group-based discussion, to negotiate different and conflicting standpoints, to communicate ideas and to produce clear, informed arguments in a professional manner. Student-led research will encourage skills of information collation, selection and synthesis. 

How the module will be assessed

The methods of summative assessment for this module are detailed in the table below.

Formative work to be submitted before each summative assessment: you can choose between submitting, as appropriate, an essay plan/structure, synopses of essay topic options (if undecided) or sample paragraph/s; for creative assignments, you can submit working drafts of parts of your composition, as arranged with the workshop convenor.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:
As with School policy, failed or unsubmitted assessments can be retaken during the August resit period.

Assessment Breakdown

Type % Title Duration(hrs)
Written Assessment 100 Essay N/A

Syllabus content

Indicative Syllabus:

  • What is modernism? James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ (1914) and Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Mark on the Wall’ (1917)
  • World War I, trauma and violence: Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915) and Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
  • The modernist epic: James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
  • Irish independence: Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September (1929)
  • Feminist possibilities: Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer Will Show (1936)
  • The end of the novel: Samuel Beckett, Molloy (1951)

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