This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module investigates modernism as a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary phenomenon via close readings of a selection of literary and essayistic texts written in the early decades of the 20th century by a range of key European authors. After an exploration of the socio-cultural and historical contexts from which these texts emerge, we study the specificities of modernist literature by paying close attention to the formal and stylistic innovations which accompany typically modernist thematic preoccupations, such as deviant sexuality, the workings of the unconscious, self-reflexive thematizations of the specificities of the medium, new technological developments, the city, time, decay and a sense of metaphysical despair. Stylistic techniques such as multi-perspectivity, free indirect discourse, stream-of-consciousness, montage and fragmentation are explored not just as tools for rendering a dramatically altered conception of experience, but as formal expressions of the plight of the peripatetic modernist subject in their own right.
The course will be taught in English. Relevant texts may be studied in English translation, but students with proficiency in European languages are encouraged to read texts in the original language.
Total contact hours: 20
Essay (5000 words) - 100%
Freud, S. (2016). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: The 1905 Edition. London and New York: Verso Books;
Gide, A. (2000). The Immoralist. London: Penguin;
Joyce, J. (2010). Ulysses. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions;
Kafka, F. (2015). The Trial. London: Penguin;
Lawrence, D.H. (1992). Women in Love. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions;
Mann, T. (2001). Death in Venice. London: Vintage;
Proust, M. (2003). In Search of Lost Time vol. 1. The Way by Swann's. London: Penguin;
Woolf, V. (2016). Mrs Dalloway. London: Vintage
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
Students will be able to demonstrate advanced knowledge and understanding of selected modernist literary works and theoretical texts;
Students will be able to demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of theories of modernism and Freud's theories of sexuality;
Students will be able to demonsrate professional analytical and close-reading skills on a range of key modernist works;
Students will be able to demonstrate complete awareness of the international nature of modernism, intercultural exchanges, and cross-disciplinary influences between literature and other forms of discourse;
Students will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of relevant historical, cultural and philosophical material;
Students will be able to demonstrate appreciation of various formal characteristics of modernist works.
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