EN32005

Modernism and Modernity

Convenor: Keith Williams

Semester: 2, Credits: 30

This module studies poetry and fiction from 1890-1945. It explores the concept of Modernism, as a series of experimental styles, in relation to modernity, the social and political contexts Modernism responded to (such as technological change, urbanism, psychology, feminism, World War I).

Topics include:

• Space and Time;
• Technology and the Cinema;
• Short Stories;
• Modernising Poetry;
• Intertextuality;
• Sexuality and Gender;
• Nationalism;
• Urbanism and Neo-Pastoral;
• the Great War;
• Consciousness and the Unconscious;
• 'Mass-Civilization' and Minority Culture.

Teaching

One-hour weekly lectures and seminars. Seminars may include presentations, student-led discussion and/or class exercises.

Assessment

• Assessed Essay (2,500 words), 40%
• Written Examination, 60%

FEATURED WRITERS

T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Poets of the Great War, H.G. Wells, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf; W.B. Yeats.