English: Single Honours
(Please refer to Module Descriptors from page 9 for more information.)
Level 1
Compulsory modules:
You MUST take the following modules:
Module Code
Module Name
Pre-requisites
UPG…30-1
Literature, Creativity and None
Critique
Excluded
Combination
s
None
(Subject to Validation)
UPG…30-1
Literature and Ideas
None
None
UPGPPF-30-1
Beyond
The
Horizon: None
Spaces and Places in
Literature
None
UPGPPG-30-1
Once
Upon
a
Time: None
Stories,
Children,
and
Literature
None
(Subject to Validation)
Option modules:
There are no option modules for single honours.
Level 2
Compulsory modules:
You MUST take the following module:
Module Code
Module Name
Pre-requisites
UPGPPH-30-2
Reading Forms/Forms of UPGPDC-60-1 or
Reading
UPGPFV-60-1
Excluded
Combinations
None
UPGPPF-30-1 or
UPGPPG-30-1
Core modules:
Select a total of three modules with at least one from List A. (You may select all three
modules from List A if you wish; otherwise, the balance of your modules should come
from List B.).
List A:
Module Code
Module Name
UPGPPM-30-2
Shakespeare’s
Words
Pre-requisites
World
of UPGPDC-60-1 or
UPGPFV-60-1
Excluded
Combinations
UPGPDM-302
UPGPDL30-2
UPGPPF-30-1 or UPGPPJ -30UPGPPG-30-1
2
UPGPPK-30-2
Romanticism Unbound
UPGPDC-60-1 or
UPGPTG-30-3
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1 or
UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPTA-30-2
Exploring the 18th Century
UPGPDC-60-1 or
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1 or
UPGPPG-30-1
None
List B:
Module Code
Module Name
Pre-requisites
Excluded
Combinations
UPGPTB-30-2
British Writing: 1900-1950
UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPTM-30-2
UPGPPL-30-2
Imagining America:
Cultural and Literary
Legacies of the United
States 1830-1970 (Subject
to Validation)
UPGPDC-60-1 or
Victorian Frictions
UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPB-302; UPGPTC30-2
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
Level 3
Compulsory modules:
You MUST take the following module:
Module Code
Module Name
UPGPPD-30-3
English
Project
Pre-requisites
Independent UPGPDC-60-1 or
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1 or
UPGPPG-30-1
Excluded
Combination
s
None
Option modules:
You must select three modules from the following list
Module Code
Module Name
UPGPPR-30-3
Children’s
1900
Pre-requisites
Fiction
since UPGPDC-60-1 or
UPGPTD-30-3
UPGPFV-60-1
(Subject to Validation)
UPGPTF-30-3
Excluded
Combinations
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
Fiction in Britain since UPGPDC-60-1 or
1970
UPGPFV-60-1
None
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPPS-30-3
Cross-Currents:
UPGPDC-60-1 or
Modernity, Literature and
UPGPFV-60-1
Colonialism
(Subject to Validation)
UPGPFH-30-3
None
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
Literature and Culture in UPGPDC-60-1 or
Britain, 1885-1915
UPGPFV-60-1
None
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPPA-30-3
Contemporary
Narrative
American UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPFS-30-3
Gothic Literature
UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPPP-30-3
Moving Words; Travel UPGPDC-60-1 or
Writing and Modernity
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
English: Half Award
(Please refer to Module Descriptors from page 9 for more information.)
Level 1
Compulsory module:
Module Code
Module Name
Pre-requisites
UPG…-30-1
Literature, Creativity and None
Critique
Excluded
Combination
s
None
(Subject to Validation)
UPG…30-1
Literature and Ideas
(Subject to Validation)
Level 2
None
None
Compulsory modules:
You MUST take the following module:
Module Code
Module Name
Pre-requisites
UPGPPH-30-2
Reading Forms/Forms of UPGPDC-60-1 or
Reading
UPGPFV-60-1
Excluded
Combination
s
None
UPGPPF-30-1 or
UPGPPG-30-1
Core modules:
You must take one module from the following:
Module Code
Module Name
UPGPPM-30-2
Shakespeare’s
Words
Pre-requisites
World
of UPGPDC-60-1 or
UPGPFV-60-1
Excluded
Combinations
UPGPDM-302
UPGPDL30-2
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPPK-30-2
Romanticism Unbound
UPGPDC-60-1 or
UPGPTG-30-3
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPTA-30-2
Exploring the 18th Century
UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPTB-30-2
British Writing: 1900-1950
UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPTD-30-2
UPGPPL-30-2
Imagining America:
Cultural and Literary
Legacies of the United
States 1830-1970 (Subject
to Validation)
UPGPDC-60-1 or
Victorian Frictions
UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPB-302; UPGPTC30-2
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
Level 3
Compulsory modules:
There are no compulsory or core modules at this stage.
Option modules:
You must select two modules from the following list.
If you choose the English Independent Project, you cannot choose a dissertation
module in the other half of your award.
Module Code
Module Name
UPGPPR-30-3
Children’s
1900
Fiction
Pre-requisites
since UPGPDC-60-1 or
(Subject to Validation)
UPGPTF-30-3
Excluded
Combinations
UPGPTD-30-3
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
Fiction in Britain since UPGPDC-60-1 or
1970
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPPS-30-3
UPGPDC-60-1 or
Cross-Currents:
Modernity, Literature and
UPGPFV-60-1
Colonialism
(Subject to Validation)
UPGPFH-30-3
None
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
Literature and Culture in UPGPDC-60-1 or
Britain, 1885-1915
UPGPFV-60-1
None
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPPA-30-3
Contemporary
Narrative
American UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPFS-30-3
Gothic Literature
UPGPDC-60-1 or
None
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1 o
r UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPPP-30-3
Moving Words; Travel UPGPDC-60-1 or
Writing and Modernity
UPGPFV-60-1
None
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
UPGPPD-30-3
English
Project
Independent UPGPDC-60-1 or
UPGPFV-60-1
UPGPPF-30-1
or UPGPPG-30-1
None
English Module Descriptors 2013-14
LEVEL 2
UPGPPH-30-2 Forms of Reading/Reading Forms: Compulsory module
Module leader: Dr Kerry Sinanan
“For we all of us, grave or light,” the sagacious narrator of George Eliot’s Middlemarch
observes, “get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.”
The perils and rewards of “entanglement,” nonetheless, are at the core of the degree-level
study of English. In particular, not just reading, but self-conscious, theorized, reading at the
textual, intertextual, and contextual levels are the distinguishing features of our discipline.
This module consolidates and extends work on the theory and practice of reading different
genres introduced at level 1 and prepares the way for level 3. Among the questions
addressed are: Isn’t reading analytically (to paraphrase Wordsworth) a process by which we
murder to dissect? To what extent and how do we read different genres differently? What is
the difference between “form” and “content” (or as Seymour Chatman has it, between
“discourse” and “story”) and what is the impact of that difference on our reading? Isn’t one
interpretation just as good as another? Why should we bother with testing and contesting
what literary critics have to say about texts? What kinds of relationships are there between
text and context? Don’t reading, analysis, interpretation, criticism, and evaluating amount to
much the same thing? What prevents us, if anything does, from crow-barring into texts any
amount of biography, history, politics, ideas, and the like? The module consists of twentyfour interlocking lectures on three texts selected partly because of their monumental position
in our global culture: Hamlet, Paradise Lost, and Middlemarch. Against the frustrations and
delights of moving quickly over a wide range of texts in “Approaches to Literature and
Criticism,” this module offers the opportunity to read more deliberately. As the module
proceeds you will be on the road to becoming sharper and more knowing and confident
readers: ultimately this module will empower you to understand your own reading practice
and to feel confident about knowing what it is you do as an English student and why that
matters to you. You will also have some sense of why the American psychologist and
philosopher William James (1842-1910) should have stayed around for this module: reading
literature, he lamented, “is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I
need resistance to celebrate!”
Assessment
Close reading; Creative writing or Critical review; Synoptic essay; Exam/Oral
UPGPPL-30-2 Victorian Frictions
Module leader: Dr Gillian Ballinger
The Victorian period is often dismissed as stuffy, prudish and conservative. Such
descriptions do not give us a full picture of this exciting and eventful time and the impact of
this period can still be felt today. This module examines some major novels and poems
which articulate central conflicts of the age by reading them in their cultural and social
contexts, exploring how these genres find different, innovative ways of commenting on the
Victorian world. Authors studied typically include Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary
Elizabeth Braddon, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Alfred Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, George Meredith, Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti,
William Morris and Augusta Webster. We study texts about industrialisation and the suffering
of the urban working class, including Oliver Twist, North and South, popular poems and
influential essays. We consider the rising interest in psychology, crime and detection in the
new genre of the dramatic monologue, as well as in the Sensation novel, specifically
Braddon’s bestseller Lady Audley’s Secret. We explore a variety of perspectives on the
relations between men and women which interrogate and challenge preconceptions about
marriage, domesticity, and the Victorian divide between public and private life. We discuss
the absorbing new ways in which novels and poems approach the subject of courtship, as
well as their controversial representations of unhappy marriages and various kinds of ‘fallen’
women such as seduced girls, prostitutes, adulteresses and painters’ models. We see how
the crisis of faith which was brought about by discoveries in geology, evolutionary biology
and biblical criticism leads to powerful poems about religious doubt such as Tennyson’s In
Memoriam; we also examine Hardy’s pessimism in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and the
decadence of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The module combines an appreciation of
the fascinating variety of Victorian literature within its contexts with a thorough grounding in
key literary genres, including the social problem novel, the Newgate novel, Sensation fiction,
the dramatic monologue and the Victorian revision of the sonnet.
Assessment
Synopsis and Evaluation of an Academic Journal Article (oral presentation and written
submission, 800 words plus 200-word handout); Essay Plan; Essay (3000 words); Seen
Examination (2 hours)
UPGPTA-30-2 Exploring the Eighteenth Century
Module leader: Dr Kerry Sinanan
In this module we shall explore the long eighteenth century, understood to extend from the
Restoration of Charles II (1660) to the end of Romanticism. Often this period of literary
production is not one we feel we know well and, yet, we have much in common with this
time. Just as new forms of writing, such as email and blogging, are the product of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, so, in the eighteenth century, many new forms of writing
were born and developed. You will, therefore, have the opportunity to study a range of
different genres from the period, including periodical essays, travel writing, letters, satiric and
comic poetry, and, the most innovative form of all, the novel, which really comes into being in
the eighteenth century. In reading these multiple forms, we will focus on representations of
the body (some of them shockingly bawdy and others rigidly polite!), constructions of gender
and explorations of sensibility and the nature of man. The dilemma of whether or not
mankind is inherently good, or fatally selfish, informs many of the debates contested within
the literature of the period and we shall encounter a range of characters from the dissipated
libertines of Rochester’s poems, to the virtuous Pamela who stands up for her rights. We will
meet rakes, such as Mr B. who finally discovers that goodness is rewarding, and
unreformable villains, such as Roxana, who perhaps even murders her own daughter in
pursuit of riches . . . . In the same way that we can see ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters, we shall
also note the opposition between the positive elements of eighteenth-century culture, that
tended to improve and reform society, and the flourishing of social evils, such as the slave
trade and enforced prostitution. Throughout the module we chart the shift from a NeoClassical and Augustan culture that prized order and harmony, to a pre-Romantic context in
which this order was challenged and the rational strand of the Enlightenment was
questioned. In all the pieces that we read, the comic side of eighteenth-century literature will
be emphasised, its wit and satire, as well as its more philosophic concerns with society and
civility.
Assessment
Portfolio of work: letter, review essay, creative writing; Synoptic Essay
UPGPPM-30-2 Shakespeare’s World of Words
Module Leader: Dr Melanie Ord
In this module we shall be studying a range of plays by William Shakespeare, the literary
genius who today towers over not only the period in which he lived and worked but also,
arguably, the whole of English literature. Although Shakespeare’s talents were recognized in
his own day, his construction as the bastion and guarantor of literary value belonged to a
later period. So too, of course, did his entrenched position at the heart of our cultural
institutions, his firm fixture in school curricula, and the national industries that have grown up
around the staging, performing, filming, editing and publishing of his works. We shall be
attuned in this module to Shakespeare-the-cultural-icon, and shall also look at the often
competing ways in which his works are read by different schools of literary criticism, paying
particular attention to the work of new historicist and cultural materialist critics. However, our
primary aim in the module is a rather traditional one: namely, to provide you with an
opportunity to deepen your knowledge and critical appreciation of Shakespeare’s work. As
the title of the module implies, one of our main focuses will be on Shakespeare’s language.
Part of what we are interested in this module is Shakespeare’s unrivalled powers of
invention and expression, as well as his ability to give us fully rounded, distinctive characters
that have entered our cultural vocabulary and even, if Harold Bloom is to be believed,
shaped our understanding of ourselves. We will be attuned throughout, then, to what is
beautiful, moving, challenging and thought-provoking about Shakespeare’s writing.
We take a genre-based approach to Shakespeare’s work, starting with the sonnets,
and moving onto comedies and histories, and then onto tragedies, problem plays and late
plays / romances. We thereby aim to give a sense of the generic range and complexity of
Shakespeare’s writing, as well as to get you thinking across generic boundaries. Though the
primary focus of this module is on the work of Shakespeare we do not neglect the writings of
his contemporaries, and you will study other Renaissance works that are chosen carefully to
reflect specific themes. We also aim to study Shakespeare not only in his literary but also in
his cultural and historical context. The assessment on this module will emphasise your own
response to the plays and your close reading skills.
Assessment
Creative writing; essay; exam; anthology
UPGPTB-30-2 British Writing: 1900-1950
Module leader: Dr Mariadele Boccardi
This module will guide you through one of the most exciting and varied periods in British
literature, where new narrative and poetic forms attempted to displace their more traditional
predecessors and where fundamental questions of individual and national identity were first
challenged and then reshaped by historical events, not least the two world wars. The module
will explore the key literary movements of the periods as well as the emergence of
middlebrow and popular genre fiction. Among the core themes of the module are gender,
Englishness, modernity, the city and the country, childhood and nostalgia, the country house
and traditional values. The texts studied, including E.M. Forster’s Howards End, Virginia
Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca
engage with these themes in different yet related ways, so that the module will give you a
sound overview of the period and more specific insights into some of the central
preoccupations of its literature.
Assessment
Critical analysis of a passage; Literary-critical essay; Final exam.
UPGPTM-30-2 Imagining America: Cultural and Literary Legacies of the United States,
1830-1970
Module Leader: Dr David Greenham
Reading America is a passage through time and space, from the creation stories of the
Cherokee Indians, to the ex-patriot glamour of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s French Riviera, from the
stockyards of Upton Sinclair’s urban Jungle, Chicago, to the cultured calm of New England’s
Boston, and from the sweltering heat of Hurston’s and Faulkner’s segregated South to the
hybrid streets of Frank O’Hara’s New York City. This module offers a critical exploration of
the cultural and literary legacies of the United States of America, focusing on the ethnic,
racial, social and sexual diversity that is represented in its principal literary genres: short
stories, novels and poems. These genres will be investigated to expose America’s
paradoxes of freedom and slavery, of new beginnings and ancient myths, of boundless
wealth and cruel poverty, but, moreover, to celebrate the counter cultural force of its vibrant
and searching artistic creativity.
Assessment
Portfolio; Group Presentation; Essay
UPGPPK-30-2 Romanticism Unbound
Module leader: Professor Robin Jarvis
Why was there such an explosion of reading and writing in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries? Why were the years 1780-1830 a period of such “unbounded” literary
creativity? How did the French Revolution of 1789-1799, and the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars of 1793-1815, impact on the literature produced by British writers? How
did poets jettison the neoclassical ideals of order and moderation and start thinking the
unthinkable? What effect did the early Industrial Revolution, and changes in the countryside,
have on the mentalities of writers? How did the Romantics develop new concepts of the
self? How did Britain’s expanding geographical and imperial horizons open up new
imaginative spaces? How did women authors start to reshape the literary market at this
time? These are just a few of the questions that preoccupy students on this module, which
features some of the greatest poets Britain has produced, such as Blake, Wordsworth, and
Shelley, and some of its finest prose stylists, like Jane Austen, William Hazlitt, and Thomas
De Quincey. The module is taught through a varied programme of lectures, seminars, and
online sessions.
Assessment
Exam; reading log; long essay.
LEVEL 3
UPGPPD-30-3 English Independent Project
Module leader: Dr Gill Ballinger
The English Independent Project module offers you the unique opportunity to pursue your
own interests by formulating, researching and producing your own extended project. It is
your chance to be adventurous in your choice of topic and to work independently on your
writing. You have a number of options available to you; this means you can focus on a
particular area within a chosen project option that suits you best. The options are:
Dissertation (10 000 words); Research-Based Creative Writing (8-10 000 words); Work
Experience (10 000 words); Group Project (6-8 000 words per student); Module Design
(10 000 words); Criticism and Review (10 000 words); Anthology (10 000 words). The
Dissertation allows you to investigate a topic of your choice. You will develop your own title
and formulate research questions to explore in a sustained and critically rigorous piece of
work. The Research-Based Creative Writing option enables you to develop creatively as well
as critically. From selecting a genre to reflecting on the writing process, you will be
developing and refining key skills. The Work Experience option offers you the opportunity to
critically reflect on any appropriate work experience that you undertook during the vacation
between levels 2 and 3. You will write a Work Experience Report and will also choose one of
the other options to develop your work experience into a Project. The Group Project option
gives you the opportunity to work in a small group to produce an appropriately-themed
journal. The Module Design option allows you to devise your own course and to reflect upon
what the module is designed to achieve. The Criticism and Review option gives you the
opportunity to review a body of writing of your choice and to provide a rationale for your
selection. The Anthology option provides you with the opportunity to create and edit your
own anthology based around a topic/genre of your choice. Whichever option you choose,
you are likely to find the module stimulating and challenging!
Assessment
Topic Proposal; Project
UPGPPR-30-3 Children’s Fiction since 1900 (Subject to Validation)
Module leader: Dr Catherine Butler
In this module we shall study a range of modern children’s fiction (predominantly British),
ranging from picturebooks to the Young Adult novel, and from school stories to fantasies set
in other worlds. In doing so we shall be reading some of the most influential literature of the
last century; but we shall also take the opportunity to explore the questions that arise in
dealing with fiction written for a child readership, including the definition of childhood itself;
the idea of innocence; the relationship of children’s books to ideology, didacticism and
censorship; narration and implied readership(s); the genres, forms and plots of children’s
literature; the interaction of text and picture; and children’s literature as a commercial
phenomenon.
Indicative primary texts include: J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy (1911), Frances Hodgson
Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911), Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908),
Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons (1930), Jacqueline Wilson, The Illustrated Mum
(1999), C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardorbe (1950), Roald Dahl, Matilda
(1988), J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Maurice Sendak,
Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Philip Pullman, Northern Lights (1995), and Mark
Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003).
Assessment
Seen exam, essay, portfolio
UPGPFS-30-3 Gothic Literature
Module leader: Dr Marie Mulvey-Roberts
What are the roots of fear, the uncanny and terror and how are these expressed in literature
and film? The Gothic is currently undergoing a revival of interest in popular culture. This
module will chart the development of Gothic writing from its origins in the architectural revival
through the eighteenth-century novel and up to Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. Primary reading
will include: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau; Shirley Jackson’s
The Haunting of Hill House and Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black and short stories by
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and Angela Carter. The way in which the Gothic has
been adapted for film will also be studied with particular reference to Shadow of the Vampire
on the making of Nosferatu and Stephen King’s Carrie.
The module will investigate the gendered divide between terror and horror along with
representations of monstrosity through the werewolf, the vampire and the ghost. The
building blocks of the module will include: the bloody chamber, poisonous flowers, the mad
scientist and premature burial. Among the theoretical perspectives which we will consider
are the Gothic sublime, Freud’s “The Uncanny”, Hurley’s abhuman, Kristeva’s abjection. The
characteristics and conventions of Gothic writing will be explored with particular emphasis
upon transgression and taboo.
Assessment
Essay, Long Essay; Seminar Presentation
UPGPTF-30-3 Fiction in Britain since 1970
Module leader: Dr Mariadele Boccardi
In the 1960s the novel as a form was declared dead – unable to represent the reality of postwar Britain in any meaningful way. And yet, from the early 1970s, the genre appeared
reborn, tackling new subjects and reinventing its form in theoretical, challenging ways, and
enjoying an unprecedented popularity that persists today. What happened at the turn of the
decade to cause such a dramatic shift? This module tries to answer the question in
contextually and theoretically informed ways. The module looks at a range of novels
published in the last 40 years, representative of the form’s variety in terms of genre,
narrative techniques, thematic concerns and theoretical influences. Among the authors
studied are Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jonathan Coe and Zadie Smith. The
reading is organised around the broad themes of history, identity, and the nation: we will
consider how fiction has responded to key historical moments such as the loss of empire,
the politics of Mrs Thatcher’s government, and the decline in industrial employment and
relate these to how contemporary fiction engages with the post-imperial representation of the
colonial experience; the redefinition of Englishness in terms of class and race; the
intersection of memory, history and narrative in the recovery of the past. The aim is to further
your understanding of the cultural, ideological and literary concerns of contemporary British
fiction.
Assessment
Literary-critical Essay; Book Review; Final Exam
UPGPPA-30-3 Contemporary American Narrative
Module leader: Dr Sarah Robertson
Martin Amis claims that “you can approach America only if you come at her from at least a
dozen different directions.” Many of those directions became apparent during the 1960s and
1970s when the United States was politically and socially torn apart by the war in Vietnam
and by the call for equality by ethnic and women’s rights movements. In the wake of a period
in which America was forced to become self-reflexive, contemporary American authors deal
with the complex issues that arose out of that period. What became ever more apparent
from the 1970s onwards were the divergent aspects of American life. A fuller understanding
of what it means to be American in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries can only
be reached by engaging with those multiple discourses. From texts that deal with the fallout
of the Vietnam War, to novels that explore the difficulties of being ethnically or economically
“other”, contemporary American literature explores the nation from a host of different
perspectives that provide an image of many Americas, rather than one stable United States.
As the course progresses you will move from Tim O’Brien’s account of Vietnam in The
Things They Carried through to the consumerism and violence of Bret Easton Ellis’s
American Psycho and finally onto a range of texts by Black- and Native-American authors,
and to Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. The module is designed to introduce
you to both canonical authors, such as Toni Morrison, and writers who continue to exist on
the literary margins. In exploring these texts you will be introduced to a range of theories,
particularly trauma theory. This is a varied and challenging module that provides a unique
insight into contemporary American life.
Assessment
Group Presentation; Report; Essay; Long Essay
UPGPPP-30-3 Moving Words: Travel Writing & Modernity
Module Leader: Professor Robin Jarvis
We are a society of travellers: it has been estimated that 80% of Britons have travelled
abroad, whether for work or pleasure, at some point in their lives. Mobility, more generally, is
a pervasive feature of our modern existence: few of us are born, grow up, study, work,
marry, and die in the same town or city, and travel provides the metaphors by which we
make sense of our jumbled lives (how many of you have thought of your degree course as a
“journey”?). Yet travel is not a new human experience. Mobility – in the varied shapes of
nomads, migrants, refugees, pilgrims, explorers, members of the armed forces, diplomats,
commuters, tourists, and others – has been the norm for millennia, while travel has defined
and transformed individuals, cultures, and economies to an incalculable extent. Writing and
travelling have always been closely connected, all the way from Homer’s Odyssey to today’s
industrial production of travel journalism. On this module you will have the opportunity to
study some of the diverse forms of travel experience and travel literature from the modern
era, loosely defined. These might include accounts of the Grand Tour in the early days of
tourism, journeys undertaken for purposes of scientific exploration or colonial expansion, and
narratives of voluntary or involuntary migration, as well as some of the most innovative and
compelling examples of the travel genre from recent times. The module will be organised
around certain key themes expressive of the historical varieties of travel experience:
Exploration, Empire, Encounters, Emigration, Exile, and Excursion.
“Moving Words is an opportunity to engage in an innovative and challenging module. Third
year is as much about staying interested as it is remaining focussed. I felt Moving Words, as
a new module, provided an extra level of novelty which offered an exploration of a genre
seldom studied on degree courses. The breadth of texts suits all interests and will often
parallel and support other modules. I thoroughly enjoyed the module; it enthused me with a
passion for Travel Literature and Travel which was previously dormant.” (Pete Travers,
“Moving Words” student, 2011-12)
Assessment
Exam; portfolio of written work.
UPGPFH-30-3 Literature and Culture in Britain, 1885-1930
Module leader: Professor William Greenslade
The years from the 1880s through to the first world war, and beyond to the 1920s, are now
intensively studied as a phase of critical importance to the understanding of British literary
and cultural historyand to the shaping of new subjectivities in a fast-changing, mass society.
The exciting cultural and intellectual climate of these years will be examined in relation to a
wide range of topics including: the impact of realism, naturalism, aestheticism and modernist
experiment in literature, theatre and related arts; debates about politics art and culture, taste
and censorship; the impact of mass culture (including cinema and radio) and
consumerism; the representation of debates about the nature of decadence and
degeneration, poverty and the urban question (with a focus on writing about London); the
performance of gender and sexuality (including a focus on the new Woman,'sexual anarchy';
and radically revised forms of masculinity); the exploration of anxieties about the future of
empire and national identity (including debates about Englishness); the renovating potential
of psychoanalytic practice in response to the trauma of WW1 (including the Freudian turn).
We will be studying texts by Henrik Ibsen, George Egerton, Thomas Hardy, George Gissing,
H.G.Wells, Joseph Conrad, E.M.Forster, D.H.Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.
Assessment
Examination; Essay; Long Essay
UPGPPS-30-3 Cross-Currents: Modernity, Literature and Colonialism
Module Leader: Dr Kerry Sinanan
In the 1980s a new subject area within English studies was born: postcolonial literature.
Announcing proudly that the Empire was writing back, many Western scholars found fresh
fields to plough in world literatures that were primarily read as responses to the modernity’s
darker legacies; colonialism, racism and slavery. In recent years ‘postcolonial’ has come to
be regarded as a limiting and centrist rubric under which to read a plethora of literatures that,
while they emerge from the cultural contexts of colonialism, are by no means restricted by
this context. Moreover, the Western academy’s appropriation of world literatures is regarded
by some as a new form of intellectual colonialism. And yet theoretical and practical questions
remain to be answered about how to read literature that appears to write back or respond to
colonialism and colonial texts. By focusing on select texts produced within the black Atlantic,
and in the spirit of enquiry, this module offers an opportunity to explore ways of reading and
responding to texts that are yoked together from the early modern period to the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries. By considering the ways in which texts, over time, respond to,
rewrite or amplify each other, the module encourages an intertextual focus that places the
literary text within the context of other works and other times. Such a reading practice
encourages the situation of texts within networks of debates and strategies of representation
that highlight the persistent importance of crucial themes, such as slavery, race and space.
This comparative reading practice enables a long view of literary history, appropriate to a
level 3 module, and encourages contextual specificity in order to understand the role that
specific texts have to play in intervening in debates to do with human equality, identity and
freedom. The idea of cross-currents references intertextual, historical and geographic
relationships between writings, invoking the ebbs and flows that characterise cultural
exchanges within even the most oppressive colonial processes. Crucially, some of the
earlier texts to which the later ones respond are themselves marginal, written by slaves,
women travellers and abolitionists. These texts invert the traditional dichotomies of
coloniser/colonised, native/stranger and are forged from the uneasiness of displacement,
dislocation and exile, all profoundly modern conditions. This module hopes to map the
terrains between texts that announce an affinity with each other while resisting the
oversimplifications of which postcolonial theory has been accused. Drawing on the work of
seminal theorists such as Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak, all of whom have
both enabled and critiqued postcolonialism, we will map cross-currents between these
responsive texts that are in one way or another a reply to modernity’s more brutal processes
and to the cultural dominance of the West’s literary history.
Assessment
Comparative close reading; theoretical engagement; intertextual synthesis; presentation