Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
EN265 The Global Novel
Assessed Essay Topics
Term Two Texts
Due: Term 3, Week One, Tuesday 26th April 2016
5000 words
The following topics are suggestions. You may modify them, or devise one of your
own, but should do so only in consultation with your seminar tutor.
While you may range as widely as you like in world fiction, not necessarily
confining yourself to books studied on the module, you should make detailed
reference to at least two of the set texts from Term Two.*
Material used in the essay must not be substantially repeated in examinations.
* Unless you decide to do question 11.
1. “Home” and/or the “local” is the most significant place in Global Novels. Do you
agree? Answer with reference to at least two texts from Term Two.
2. “Globalisation” is uneven development. Elaborate, with reference to at least
two texts studied in Term Two.
3. In what ways are objects interesting registers of the global in Global Novel
texts?
4. New technologies are often read as creating or enabling forms of globalisation.
In what ways can this be seen in the course texts?
5. The City/Urbanisation is often a sign of globalisation. Do the texts we have read
reflect this?
6. Write about the role played by one or two of the following in any two Global
novels: Labour and/or Work; Natural resources; Pioneering; Food; Violence; the
Family; the fantastic/supernatural; the figure of the writer and/or the act of
writing; transport; “new” media; debt; the transnational corporation; the State.
7. Some critics argue that the globalisation of the novel is something distinct from
the story of globalisation in the novel. Referring to at least two texts from Term
One, write an essay on the terms of their situation as “global” novels in that first
sense (i.e. with primary reference to features such as audience, circulation, media,
marketing, reception, etc.)
8. Write on the event and experience of “culture shock” as a registration of the
process of globalisation. Answer with reference to at least two novels from Term
Two.
9. “Spatial compression and temporal acceleration allow people, ideas, and goods
to move with great speed, while also making it possible for individuals, however
far apart, to witness events simultaneously.” Gregory Jusdanis, ‘Culture, culture
everywhere: the swell of globalisation theory’, Diaspora (Vol. 5, no. 1, 1996).
Using this quote as your platform, write an essay on the phenomenon of “spacetime compression” as a feature of the Global Novel.
10. Outline ways in which the “global” (or “local”) element in novels is expressed
in their narrative (or any other formal) techniques.
11. Make a case for the inclusion of a novel you have read that is not on the
syllabus. Your essay must refer to at least one set text by way of comparison and
fit the rubric of term one
12. Write an essay detailing how at least two of the texts you have studied in Term
Two offer a means of resistance to the process of Globalisation and/or an
antipathy to the global.
13. “World” does not necessarily mean “global”. Elaborate, with reference to at
least two novels we have read.