Admission requirements
Students need to have passed 10 EC in (English) Literature courses. This requirements does not apply to pre-master students Literary Studies.
Description
This course explores literature in English from 1918-2024. We investigate novels, short stories, poetry, and (for one week) cinema from the English-speaking world. We cover together writers and artists from New Zealand, Ireland, America, England, Hungary, Denmark, Nigeria, Scotland, India, and South Africa.
This was an age of anxiety. It saw the impact of two world wars, the rise of totalitarianism, the Troubles and Civil War in Ireland, the Bomb and the Cold War, financial crises, and pandemics. It was also an era of profound social change, witnessing the development of feminism and women’s rights, imperialism and decolonization, migration and globalization. The literature we will read engages profoundly with these potent historical forces.
In the midst of change and crisis, it was simultaneously an era of astonishing creativity, with some of the best writers in English flourishing in these years. The course touches on the high Modernism of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot, modern poetry by Yeats and Auden, mid-century fiction by writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Karen Blixen, and Muriel Spark, feverish film-makers like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, exciting voices from the post-colonial world, including Chinua Achebe, R. K. Narayan, and J. M. Coetzee, and such gifted contemporary writers as Jhumpa Lahiri and Ali Smith.
Course objectives
This course will extend and deepen the power of students’ literary critical analysis through in-depth consideration of texts. Students will explore critical debates central to the literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The course will also aim to extend the students’ skills in the reading of literary texts and the understanding of the relationship of a text to its cultural/social contexts. Students will be encouraged in class discussion to share analytical and critical views on the set texts, and will focus research and writing skills in the writing of two assignments and a final exam. The essays will be on a relevant subject of the students’ own choice within the parameters of the course, and will extend the students’ critical skills and their ability to produce good, clear writing.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar (Two-hour tutorial per week)
Research (Independent reading/study of primary and secondary literature)
Assessment method
Assessment
Mid-term essay of 1500-1800 words (20%)
Final essay of 2000-2500 (30%)
Final exam (3-hours) (50%)
The questions for the essays will be posted shortly before the semester begins.
Attendance is compulsory. Missing more than two tutorials means that students may be excluded from the tutorials. Unauthorized absence also applies to being unprepared, not participating and/or not bringing the relevant course materials to class.
The exam will feature questions about the literature (and the film) on the syllabus. The questions are designed to allow students to formulate informative answers based on critical insight into twentieth and twenty-first century literature and knowledge of the various important contexts gained during the tutorial discussion and through individual study. The questions for the essays and in the exam are designed to allow students to formulate informative answers based on critical insight into the novels and knowledge of the various important contexts gained during the tutorial discussion and individual study.
**Participation in the classes is an element in the assessment of the course – you must regularly attend the class and be prepared for each discussion. **
With the essay/s and the exam answers, students are graded according to the following criteria: the depth and sophistication (and to some extent, the originality) of their analysis; the extent to which their essays and exam answers argue a coherent case; the clarity and coherence of the structure; the sophistication, correctness and articulacy of the writing and the ability to produce formal academic prose; the intelligent use of a good range of relevant secondary material.
To receive a grade for your essay/s, you must upload them on Brightspace, so they go through Turnitin.
All students should be aware that plagiarism is considered a serious offence against scholarly integrity, and you are expected to present researched and thoughtful work that is your own. It is equally an offence to submit work that has been written using AI; this is, simply put, cheating, as it cannot be reasonably considered your work. Failure to present your own written work will have consequences.
Weighing
Mid-term essay of 1500-1800 words (20%)
Final essay of 2000-2500 (30%)
Final exam (3-hours) (50%)
The final grade is determined by calculating the average grade of the exam answers plus the average grade for the essay/s. To pass the course, the weighted average must be 5.5 or higher.
Resit
Only when the final grade is insufficient can students resit exams or rewrite essays. The resit grade will replace the original grade.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Optional: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th or 10th edition, Volume II or Volume F: The Twentieth Century and After (you’ll find the Yeats, Eliot and Auden poems here – but they’re also to be found elsewhere).
Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922)(Penguin Classics)
W. B. Yeats – selected poems (1916-39) (to be made available online or in Norton) (We will read: “Easter, 1916”; “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”; “The Second Coming”; “A Prayer for my Daughter”; “Leda and the Swan”; “Sailing to Byzantium”; “Among School Children”; “Lapis Lazuli”; “Man and the Echo”; “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”; and his “A General Introduction to my Work”.)
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922) (in Norton or as part of T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems, 1909-62 (Faber & Faber) or T. S. Eliot, Selected Poems (Faber & Faber))
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927) (Penguin)
Elizabeth Bowen, Collected Stories (1940-45) (Vintage)
Karen Blixen [Isak Dinesen], “Babette’s Feast” in Anecdotes of Destiny (1953) (Penguin)
W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”, “September 1, 1939” (1939) (in Norton or to be made available online)
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958) (Penguin)
R. K. Narayan, *The Guide *(1958) (Penguin)
Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (1964) (Penguin)
J.M. Coetzee, *Disgrace *(1999) (Vintage)
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (2003) (HarperPerennial)
Ali Smith, Autumn (2016) (Hamish Hamilton*)
Students should buy on DVD, or watch online, or stream (through a legal streaming service) Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The Red Shoes (1948)
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Registration Contract teaching and Exchange
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.#### Registration Exchange
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal
Remarks
For the first week please read in advance and think about, “At the Bay”, “The Garden Party”, “The Daughters of the Late Colonel”, “Marriage à la Mode’, ‘Life of Ma Parker”, and “Miss Brill” from Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories.