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ENGL 308: Contemporary Literature

Course Aims and Objectives:
ENGL 308 focuses on different kinds of contemporary literature in English produced between the 1950s and the present, considering material that could variously be described as experimental, feminist, gothic, postcolonial, postmodern, post-9/11, and/or queer. The course aims to consolidate and extend student knowledge of ways in which contemporary writers expand notions of ‘English literature’, including ways in which they both respond to and stimulate critical theory. We foreground English literature in its international dimensions, reading texts from Canada, the Caribbean, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, as well as from multi-ethnic and devolving Britain. Recurrent themes, which include apocalypse, beginnings, endings, hauntings, margins, metamorphosis, migration and rewriting, are related to the formal qualities (genre, structure and style) of the texts studied. The course encourages non-linear connections in its thematic rather than chronological organisation. We engage inter-generic forms (the graphic novel; creative/critical writing) as well as a range of more standard genres (novels; short stories; poetry), highlighting literary experimentation and critically considering notions of ‘the contemporary’.

Assessment:
1 x 3,000-word essay (40%); 1 x exam (60%)

Submission deadlines:
Essay: 12 noon, Monday Week 10/Term 1.

Contact:
20 one-hour lectures + 20 one-hour seminars

Learning Outcomes:
By the end of course students should

• Have enhanced breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding of the development and variety of contemporary literature in English, from the 1950s to the present
• Have increased knowledge of the relationship between English literature and contemporary social, historical, political, cultural and linguistic contexts
• Have improved awareness of literary work from erstwhile/continuing margins (geographical; ethnic; gendered; sexual; classed; generic; etc)
• Have improved analytical skills in the close reading of a range of primary and secondary sources
• Have developed written and oral skills, by presenting critical arguments and engaging in intellectual debates, in spoken and different written forms
• Be able to demonstrate thematic, formal and contextual connections between different texts studied on the course
• Be able to relate literary works studied to relevant social, historical, political, cultural and linguistic contexts
• Be able judiciously to deploy and query existing critical and theoretical frameworks

Set Texts:
Any edition of set texts is acceptable. Copies will be on short loan in the University Library and available for purchase from campus Blackwell’s.

Caribbean Poetry Selection – on Moodle
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958)
J. G. Ballard, ‘The Beach Murders’ (1966) – on Moodle
Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory (1984)
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011)
Samuel Beckett, The Expelled (1954)
J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (2003)
Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus! (2003) 
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (1988)
Janet Frame, Faces in the Water (1961) 
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)
Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) 
Roddy Lumsden (ed.), Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (2010)
Alan Moore, & D. Gibbons, Watchmen (1987)
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (1997)
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956)
Jeanette Winterson, The World & Other Places (2000)

A list of recommended secondary reading will be made available on the course moodle site.

Lecture / Seminar Programme

Term 1

Term 2

Term 3

Back to: ENGL 306

Forward to: ENGL 365

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