Contemporary English Literature
0
2019-2020
01011546
Literature-Anglo-American Studies
English
Face-to-face
SEMESTRIAL
6.0
Elective
1st Cycle Studies
Recommended Prerequisites
Not applicable.
Teaching Methods
Some expository classes but more often class discussion of primary and secondary texts.
Learning Outcomes
Students will:
• Be introduced to some of the most important English writing of the last hundred years and to its key concerns and themes;
• Acquire an understanding of the historical and cultural context of English writing and of how that context has impacted on literary production;
• Develop their skills as close readers and, at a more general theoretical or methodological level, acquire useful theoretical and analytical tools that will prepare them to undertake further study in this area.
Work Placement(s)
NoSyllabus
The course traces the evolution of English literature from Modernism to the post and neo-Modernism through an examination of the some of the most significant writing in verse and prose of the epoch. This evolution is seen as corresponding to larger political, social and economic changes Britain has experienced in the last century (notable the impact of two World Wars and the loss of Empire). Particular attention will be paid to importance of formal innovation and experimentation and to the emergence into the literary domain of new voices and modes of writing. Among the writers studied will be: T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Philip Larkin, Derek Walcott and John Ash.
Head Lecturer(s)
Susana Isabel Arsénio Nunes Costa Araújo
Assessment Methods
Assessment
Mini Tests: 40.0%
Synthesis work: 60.0%
Bibliography
Brannigan, John (2003). Orwell to the Present: Literature in England, 1945-2000. London: Palgrave.
Carter, Ronald and McRae, John (2004). The Routledge Guide to Modern English Writing: Britain and Ireland. London: Routledge.
Hynes, Samuel (1979). The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s. London: Faber and Faber.
North, Michael (1999). Reading 1922: A Return to the Scene of the Modern. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP.
Rainey, Lawrence (2005). Modernism: An Anthology. Oxford: Willey-Blackwell.