This module examines a range of literary works written during or immediately before or after the London Blitz. It focuses on how various writers (poets, dramatists, and novelists) responded to that experience of threat, uncertainty, and assault. Many of these works explore the relationship between identity, individual experience, and the local, social, and/or national community. They also explore experience from different social perspectives and in varying tones and genres, from the thriller paranoia of Greene to the retroactive farce of Waugh, from the class-conscious pathos of Hamilton to the search for renewal and reconciliation in Eliot and Macaulay. Where some focus on immediate experience in London and its suburbs, others engage with the reality of the Blitz from a self-consciously distanced or fractured perspective. This module will explore this variety of representation and response through a close attention to style, genre, theme, and social and historical context.  

- analyse how individual works reflect, question, and engage critically with questions of genre, style, and definitions of social and national experience

- articulate a clear awareness of the relationship between theme, subject, and form in these works

- formulate comparative, analytical, and critically and contextually informed conclusions about the texts

The module will consist of two lectures a week and two one-hour seminars towards the end of the semester. Lectures will provide students with an introduction to social, cultural, and historical context and a close analytical reading of individual works. The module will focus on encouraging students to develop and articulate their own informed, individual approaches to the individual texts and to the focus of the module as a whole. Students will be provided with any supplementary texts either electronically, through Learning Central, or in hard copy.

This module will develop and practise skills in close reading, scholarly research, and independent thinking. Students will be asked to contemplate the connections and tensions between the texts studied and the different responses of those texts to immediate and recent historical events. They will be encouraged to develop their ability to synthesize information and to push ideas into independent, informed conclusions.

The assessment will help students to improve and refine writing skills. Employability skills that will be developed in this module include the ability to synthesize information, problem-solve, write argumentatively and convincingly, research independently, and speak in small groups.

One 3200 word essay.

THE POTENTIAL 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

Week 2. Defining the People: Before the Bombs

Noël Coward, This Happy Breed (1939)

Week 3. Adapting for Genre

Agatha Christie, N or M? (1941)

Week 4. Refraction and Retreat

Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)

Week 5. Phoney War and Farce

Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags (1942)

Week 6. Paranoia and Isolation

Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943)

Week 7. The Human Factor

Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude (1947)

Week 8. Form and Spiritual Renewal

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Week 9. Romancing the Ruins

Rose Macaulay, The World My Wilderness (1950)

Week 10. Conclusions

Primary Texts

Agatha Christie, N or M? (HarperCollins)

Noël Coward, This Happy Breed (Samuel French)

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (Faber)

Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (Vintage)

Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude (Abacus)

Rose Macaulay, The World My Wilderness (Virago)

Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags (Penguin)

Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (Oxford Classics)

Further information about recommended reading will be provided at the start of the module.