Module ENGL2441: POST-WAR FICTION (SPECIAL TOPIC)

Department: English Studies

ENGL2441: POST-WAR FICTION (SPECIAL TOPIC)

Prerequisites

• Any Single or Joint Honours finalist student wishing to take this Special Topic module must have satisfactorily completed the required number of core modules. Combined Honours and Outside Honours students must have satisfactorily completed either two Level 1 core introductory modules, or at least one Level 1 core module and one further lecture based module in English at Level 2.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To allow students to study in depth Post-War prose writing and its cultural and political contexts.

Content

• This module will explore a range of fictional texts written by British and Commonwealth writers since 1945.
• The aim of the module is to study the forms taken by and the preoccupations of the novel from immediately after the Second World War until the last decade of the twentieth century.
• The approach will combine an emphasis on formal close reading with an understanding of the various cultural, political and intellectual contexts, reflected in and shaping the fiction of the period.
• Attention will be given both to continuities in the novel tradition and to experimental forms and new historical pressures arising from changes in British culture since the war.
• Typically the module might be organised around the following topics: weeks one and two: After the War: Looking Backward; weeks three to five: Mid-Century Moralists; weeks six and seven: Politics and the Fantastic (Doris Lessing, Memoirs of a Survivor (1972), and Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986); weeks eight to ten: national identities.
• Within these broad topics we will explore varieties of style, literary influences such as pastoral, utopianism, magic realism, metafiction, the grotesque and the fantastic and political and cultural influences such as feminism and postcolonialism, scientific and philosophical ideas.
• We will reflect upon the usefulness of the term 'postmodernism' as a description of experimental art since the sixties.
• Issues around regional, national and ethnic identities, gender and sexuality, family relations, religious belief and political commitment, the construction of history and war and the portrayal of madness and the fragmentation of selfhood will also be engaged.
• Where appropriate we will study relevant essays and non-fictional writings by the chosen authors (e.g. Orwell on politics and the English language, Iris Murdoch on the idea of the Good, Salman Rushdie on 'imaginary homelands', Doris Lessing on the problems of realism).
• The module will also reflect upon the challenge of evaluating and studying the literature of one's own time and on the continuing vitality of the novel as a genre.

Learning Outcomes

• By the end of the module the students will have gained a fuller knowledge of a number of literary texts, together with a greater understanding of issues of interpretation and reception as they affect the works of the Post-War writers.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies
• skills of effective communication and argument
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the essay may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before the first assessed essay, students have an individual 15 minute consultation in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points relevant to the essay and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University