This module offers in-depth study of a number of some the most exciting key modernist fictions by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce. Through sustained close reading, an attention to language, and a sensitivity to literary influence and context, we will explore these wilful, brilliant, funny, and sometimes challenging texts. In doing so, students will develop an ability to draw associations between individual works and the movement known as ‘modernism’ itself, exploring modernist aesthetics, the fragmentation of meaning inherent in so much modernist fiction.

Over the course of two semesters we will cover a selection of major texts by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf Samuel Beckett and James Joyce. The module places emphasis on the importance of close-reading and analytical skills, and particular attention will be paid to placing the texts in the context of modernism as a whole.

On completion of the module students should have a deep and broad knowledge of the texts on the course. They should be able to think about the period analytically, to undertake close readings of the set texts, and to locate them in their literary contexts, while making wider associations across the course as a whole.

One one-hour lecture , and one two-hour seminar weekly. During the lectures students will be given handouts, and powerpoint presentations will be used where appropriate. These will be made available to students on Learning Central directly after the session. During the seminars students may occasionally be asked to give presentations, and each week there will be the opportunity for small-group discussion and close-analysis of the text.

WHAT IS EXPECTED OF ME?

Students are expected to attend and participate in the lectures and seminars for all modules on which they are enrolled. Students with good cause to be absent should inform their module leaders, who will provide the necessary support. Students with extenuating circumstances should submit the Extenuating Circumstances Form in accordance with the School’s procedures.

The total number of hours which students are expected to devote to each 20-credit module is 200. Of these, 30 hours will be contact hours with staff (lectures and seminars); the remaining 170 hours should be spent on self-directed learning for that module (reading, preparation for seminars, research, reflection, formative writing, assessed work, exam revision).  There are also additional seminars and workshops that students are able to attend.

This module will develop specific skills. Students will become familiar with the techniques and tools of close-reading and textual analysis, as students develop and enhance their ability to assimilate knowledge of a variety of modernist tropes, themes and formal techniques. The close analysis of texts will call for sensitivity to the use of language, as well as literary and historical awareness. Critical thinking, interdisciplinary skills, the successful integration of theoretical material into an analysis of a text, and the formulation of concise and effective argumentation will all be vital critical tools utilised during this module.  Employability skills include the ability to synthesise information, operating in group-based discussion, debating ideas and producing informed arguments in a clear, precise and professional manner.

A critical commentary and an essay each to be submitted at the end of the semester. Questions will be provided but students will also be encouraged to develop their own topics. The module is assessed according to the Marking Criteria set out in the English Literature Student Handbook; there are otherwise no academic or competence standards which limit the availability of adjustments or alternative assessments for students with disabilities.

Essay (3200 words) = 100%
Approx date of assessment in January

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:

In accordance with University regulations, students are allowed two attempts at retrieval of any failed essay, for a maximum module mark of 40%.  Resit assessments are held over the summer.

Week 1: Introduction: What is Modernism?

Week 2: Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907)

Week 3: Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

Week 4: Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)

Week 5: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)

Week 6: Reading Week

Week 7: James Joyce, Extracts from Ulysses

Week 8: James Joyce, Extracts from Ulysses

Week 9: Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

Week 10: Samuel Beckett, Watt (1953)

Week 11: Conclusion. Feedback and Q & A.

Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent (Penguin, 2010)
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (Oxford World Classics, 2012)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Penguin Modern Classics, 2000)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Penguin Modern Classics, 2000)
James Joyce, Ulysses (Penguin Modern Classics, 2000)
Samuel Beckett, Murphy (Faber and Faber, 2009)
Samuel Beckett, Watt (Faber and Faber, 2009)

Rachel Bowlby, ed., Virginia Woolf, Longman Critical Readers Series (London: Longman, 1992)
Maud Ellmann, The Nets of Modernism: Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Sigmund Freud (Cambridge: CUP, 2010)
David James ed., The Legacies of Modernism (Cambridge: CUP, 2011)
Jonathan Greenberg, Modernism, Satire and the Novel (Cambridge: CUP, 2011)
Alexander Harris, Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (London: Thames & Hudson, 2010)
Stephen Kern, The Modernist Novel. A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: CUP, 2011)
Owen Knowles and Gene M. Moore, eds., The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Joseph Conrad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
Michael Levinson, The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, Second Edition (Cambridge: CUP, 2011)
Len Platt, Modernism and Race (Cambridge: CUP, 2011)
Susan Sellers, The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, Second Edition (Cambridge: CUP, 2010)
Allan H. Simmons, ed., Joseph Conrad in Context (Cambridge: CUP, 2009)
Allan H. Simmons, ed., Joseph Conrad: Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge: CUP, 2012)
J. H. Stape, ed.,The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad (Cambridge, CUP, 1996)
Annalisa Zox-Weaver, Women Modernists and Fascism (Cambridge, CUP, 2011)
Jesse Wolfe, Bloomsbury, Modernism, and the Reinvention of Intimacy (Cambridge: CUP, 2011)
Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, First Series (1925)
Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, Second Series (1932)
Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 Vols, ed. Anne Oliver Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1980-4)
Chris Ackerly, SE Gontarski, eds., The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett (Michigan: The Grove Press, 2004).
Tim Armstrong, Modernism, Technology and the Body (1998).
Tim Armstrong, Modernism (2005).
Derek Attridge, Joyce Effects: On Language, Theory and History (Cambridge: CUP, 2001).
Michael J Begnal, Joyce and the City: the Significance of Place (2002).
Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1983).
David Bradshaw, ed. A Concise Companion to Modernism (2003)
Malcolm Bradbury & James McFarlane, eds. Modernism: 1830-1930 (1976).
Peter Bürger, The Theory of the Avante-Garde (1984).
Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avante-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (1987).
Steven Connor, Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).
Leslie Hill, Beckett’s Fiction: In Different Words (Cambridge: CUP, 1990).
Astradur Eysteinsson, The Concept of Modernism (1990).
Peter Faulkner, ed., A Modernist Reader (1986).
Terence Killeen, Ulysses Unbound: A Reader’s Companion to James Joyce’s Ulysses (Dublin: Wordwell, 2004).
Karen Lawrence, The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
Peter Nicholls, Modernisms (1995)
John Pilling, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Beckett (Cambridge: CUP, 2004).
Lawrence Rainey, ed., Modernism: An Anthology (2005).
Christopher Ricks, Beckett’s Dying Words (Oxford: OUP, 1995).