Module ENGL2651: Literature of the Second World War

Department: English Studies

ENGL2651: Literature of the Second World War

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 introduce students to the range and complexity of literary responses to the global watershed of the Second World War
• To introduce students to the broad literary, historiographical and theoretical questions raised by war writing
• To enhance competencies in reading modern literature in its historical, national, social, and cultural contexts
• To encourage sensitivity to the specificities of real-world historical predicaments as represented in major literary works, while aiding students to identify commonalities of both lived and literary experience across national and cultural boundaries

Content

• Surveys the literature of the Second World War, focusing primarily on English-language literature (UK and US) while also engaging some war writing in translation from other combatant nations (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Union)
• Addresses major writers of the wartime/mid-century period, such as Heinrich Böll, Elizabeth Bowen, Albert Camus, Keith Douglas, Marguerite Duras, Martha Gellhorn, Graham Greene, Vasily Grossman, Primo Levi, Kurt Vonnegut, Rebecca West
• Engages the broad spectrum of war experiences through the writings of soldiers, civilians, partisans and resistance fighters, prisoners of war and victims of wartime genocide
• Addresses a broad range of literary genres and forms: novels and short stories, poetry, drama and non-fiction (memoir, testimony, journalism)
• Engages the full temporal range of ‘Second World War literature’, from on-the-spot responses to an ongoing war to works deploying a longer historical perspective
• Combines close reading of individual texts with wider investigation of relevant key issues in modern critical theory, such as historicism, trauma, ethics, the juridical and the nature of the human and the ‘dehumanised’

Learning Outcomes

• Students will gain extensive knowledge and understanding of a landmark event in twentieth-century history and especially of its literary representations
• Students will understand the complex relationships among literary, historical, and ‘popular memory’ representations of the Second World War

• 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
• 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
• skills of effective communication and argument
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• 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; informal position papers encourage students to advance claims and refine them in the light of seminar discussion
• 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. 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 essay, students will have an individual consultation in which they will receive feedback on their essay plan.

■ 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