This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
By studying literary works in conjunction with economic and sociological theory, this module investigates the manifold ways in which literary texts may reflect and/or critique the social, political, and economic contexts in which they were produced. Proceeding chronologically from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day, we shall analyse literary texts that engage with the psycho-social consequences of capitalism in its various manifestations. Topics of enquiry include the socio-political and psychological repercussions of industrialization, bureaucratization, globalization and neoliberalism and how these have been theorized and represented aesthetically, as well as questions pertaining to alienation and disenchantment, the rationalization of everyday life, work ethics, burnout, the psychology of consumption, and broader ethical issues relating to the tension between economic self-interest and communal values. Theoretical works we will study on this module include extracts from Marx, Weber, and Simmel, as well as texts by Adorno, Hardt and Negri, Sennett, Boltanski and Chiapello, Klein, Ehrenberg and Crary.
Total contact hours: 20
Essay (5000 words) - 100%
Any edition of the following:
Goncharov, Ivan, Oblomov (1859);
Mann, Thomas, Death in Venice (1912);
Melville, Herman, Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853);
Rand, Ayn, Atlas Shrugged (1957) (extracts);
Shriver, Lionel, The Mandibles (2016) (extracts);
Zola, The Ladies' Delight (1883) (extracts).
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
Students will be able to develop deep and critically informed knowledge of a range of literary texts engaging with the topic of capitalism and its psycho-social consequences in a global context;
Students will be able to systematically acknowledge and appreciate different historical stages in the development of literature on capitalism;
Students will be able to critically and independently interrogate the distinctive historical, social, and political contexts in which the literary texts have been produced and analyse the ways in which they may reflect and/or critique these contexts;
Students will be able to systematically understand and evaluate theoretical conceptions of capitalism, neoliberalism and critiques of these models, both recent and historical;
Students will be able to establish analytical and original connections between the realms of the aesthetic, the psycho-social, the political, and the economic;
Students will be able to demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of changing reception contexts and appreciate their significance.
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