This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The award of literary prizes is a highly potent tool of cultural policy that frequently determines the wider national and international impact of a literary work. As such it is of crucial relevance to the study of comparative literature in a number of ways: the award of literary prizes reflects the beginnings of the successful or, as the case may be, the (ultimately) abortive formation of literary canons; moreover, it affords insights into processes of cultural production and marketing and reveals in which ways political and economic agendas are tied up with these processes; it also offers a perspective on transnational and transcultural aspects of the production and reception of literature and indicates shifting notions of the social function of literature and the writer; literature is thus understood as a cultural product in ever changing contexts which is frequently subject to external forces of which literary prizes become indicators or even 'enforcers'.
This module will investigate with the methods of literary and cultural studies the development of a number of major literary awards which have achieved global significance, among them the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize (for Fiction), the Prix Goncourt, and the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels. (This list may be modified according to precedent to accommodate the topical relevance of individual award winners in the future.) Seminars will develop a historical perspective by scrutinising and analysing award winners of the past and their most recent counterparts in their different production and marketing contexts as well as in changing reception contexts: seminars will include the close reading of individual works as well as their critical reception, and the analysis of marketing strategies in various media (e.g. reports in culture magazines, reviews, displays in book shops, translations, etc.); final winners will be interpreted in the context of the respective long and short lists from which they emerged; historical developments will be taken into account, for instance by investigating 'forgotten' prize winners in comparison with those who, largely through the agency of academic intervention, ‘made it’ into the canon; the module thus also offers an insight into the history of the discipline of literary studies.
Total Contact Hours: 20
Private Study Hours: 130
Total Study Hours: 150
Main assessment methods
Short Essay (1,000 words) – 30%
Extended Essay (2,000 words) – 50%
Presentation (15 minutes) – 10%
Presentation Write-up (500 words) – 10%
Reassessment methods
Reassessment Instrument: 100% Coursework
The University is committed to ensuring that core reading materials are in accessible electronic format in line with the Kent Inclusive Practices. The most up to date reading list for each module can be found on the university's reading list pages: https://kent.rl.talis.com/index.html
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module Level 5 students will be able to:
1 Recognise and analyse the cultural contexts from which notions of literary quality emerge;
2 Appreciate the problems of successful, respectively abortive, canon formation in its earliest stages;
3 Follow critical debates in the most influential national and international feuilletons and to form an opinion of their own by critically engaging with them;
4 Demonstrate confidence in talking about recent literary texts and in joining literary debates;
5 Understand the politics of literary production and marketing, and the economic, social, and cultural forces by which it is driven;
6 Analyse literary texts in their individual production and changing reception contexts (including the shifting appreciation of aesthetic and moral values);
7 Apply literary and cultural theories to the study of literature;
8 Demonstrate a perspective on the history of the discipline of literary studies.
The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1 Demonstrate the ability to undertake the comparative analysis of texts;
2 Demonstrate improved oral communication skills;
3 Demonstrate refined written communication skills, including the structuring of an original argument;
4 Demonstrate an ability to read closely and critically, and to apply a range of critical terms to texts;
5 Demonstrate familiarisation with the mechanisms of the shaping of public opinion.
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