MA in Literary Studies: Pathway in Critical Theory

What you'll study Core module Module title Credits. Theories of Literature & Culture Theories of Literature & Culture 30 credits

This core module for the pathway in ‘Modern Literary Theory’ surveys key currents in literary and cultural theory from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Beginning with the examination of shifting ideas and theories of the ‘literary’ in the module of the discipline’s development, it goes on to explore ten key thinkers and tendencies, starting with Nietzsche. These will include Freud, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Benjamin and Adorno, Structuralism, Blanchot, Derrida, Gender and Postcolonial Theory. Although the question of the relationship of theory to literary and cultural criticism is a central one, the module will enable you to focus on theoretical concepts in their own right. You will also be asked to consider the theoretical implications of the particular formal and stylistic choices made by the thinkers covered.

30 credits.

In addition to the core module and dissertation, you also take three option modules from the selection below.

Option modules Module title Credits. Studies in Comparative Literature & Criticism Studies in Comparative Literature & Criticism 30 credits

This core module for the ‘Comparative Literature & Criticism’ pathway of the MA in Comparative Literary Studies will introduce you to the main concepts of comparative literary theory and practice and its principal debates, complementing these with textual analyses and the opportunity to engage in comparative readings. We will examine key aspects of the development of the discipline of “comparative literature”, and study the theoretical frameworks elaborated to describe the ways texts relate to, derive from, or influence other texts (such as influence, imitation and intertextuality, translation, and reception). Historical relationships and how these are constructed will be examined, focussing on the idea of tradition, the concept of the canon and its revisions, as well as the importance of literary history in our understanding of literature.

The literary texts and films studied will enable you to study “in action” central concepts of comparative critical practice, focussing for instance on genre; topoi; thematic approaches; textual rewritings; “translations” of texts to different genres (e.g. poetry to prose) or media (e.g. written text to film).

The module will ask questions such as: what happens to a text and its meaning when it is adapted to or referenced in a new geographical, historical, or social context? What does this mean for the concept of meaning itself? What is the relationship between genre, theme and story? Between a historically situated national identity and the crossing of linguistic, cultural and historical boundaries?

Teaching Mode: 3-hour seminar, including lecture-type input from the tutor.

30 credits. Modern Literary Movements Modern Literary Movements 30 credits

This core module for the pathway in ‘Modern Literature’ surveys the most internationally significant trends, influences, and movements in European and American literature of the twentieth century (and potentially beyond), including the impacts of Bergson and Nietzsche, the ‘prophetic’ role of the modern poet, challenges to Realism, the schools of Expressionism, Surrealism, and Absurdism, the modernist disruption of literary conventions, aspects of writing on the Holocaust, and the emergence of poststructuralism, OULIPO and postmodernism. These developments are studied through the analysis of major representative texts either in English (e.g. Joyce’s Ulysses ) or in English translation (e.g. Gide’s L’Immoraliste ) within their relevant cultural contexts. We will read works by James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, André Gide, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, W.G. Sebald, Italo Calvino, Bertolt Brecht, W.H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, William Faulkner, Primo Levi, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Virginia Woolf.

Teaching Mode: Weekly lecture followed by 2-hour seminar.

30 credits. Literature of the Caribbean & its Diasporas Literature of the Caribbean & its Diasporas 30 credits

This core module for the pathway in Literature of the Caribbean & its Diasporas intensively surveys Caribbean and diaspora literatures to highlight significant movements relative to the social, political and historical contexts impacting upon these new literatures. We are interested to trace the developments within the forms of literary and artistic expression examined, to show how literary texts, forms and genres veered between consolidation and experimentation from beginnings marked by the slave narrative, a preoccupation with history and memory and a close affinity with the aural/ oral, and to further explore some of the determining forces which underpinned the transformations of the literatures. We seek to trace the influence, and textual embodiment of intellectual and cultural developments in the region’s literature and that of its diaspora including the impacts of Colonialism, post-Colonialism, Negritude, and Globalisation. These developments are studied through the analysis of representative texts either in English (e.g. Walcott’s Omeros) or in English translation (e.g. Condé’s Windward Heights)

Teaching Mode: 3-hour seminar, including lecture-type input from the tutor.

30 credits. American Literature & Culture: Critical and Theoretical Concepts American Literature & Culture: Critical and Theoretical Concepts 30 credits

Nineteenth and twentieth century American literature sought to define the nation in the face of the fragmenting effects of modernity and postmodernity. The version of America that emerges from this literature – and in fact what makes this literature representative of that version of nation – depends very much on how it is read. Via competing readings of canonical American texts, this core module for the ‘American Literature & Culture’ pathway investigates how American critical and theoretical conceptions shape American literature, producing different “Americas”. Not only engaging you in a rigorous study of particular phases and applications of American literary criticism and theory, the module also consolidates your knowledge of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. An incisive knowledge of these literary and critical-theoretical histories provides a vital platform if you are embarking on the postgraduate pathway in twentieth and twenty-first century American literature and culture.

Teaching Mode: 3-hour seminar, including lecture-type input from the tutor.

30 credits. Nineteenth-Century Literature: Romanticisms Nineteenth-Century Literature: Romanticisms 30 credits

This core module for the 'Romantic and Victorian Literature and Culture' pathway of the MA in Comparative Literary Studies examines the current debate in nineteenth-century studies about connections between Romantic and Victorian literature and the persistence of a Romantic tradition throughout the century.

During this module, you'll be able to develop your interests in two key literary periods and to question the usefulness of traditional periodisation. In each seminar we will compare texts from both periods on the basis of genre and theme, and examine the ways in which individual texts relate to, derive from, or influence other texts. We will study the intense reactions to the deaths of the Romantic poets in the 1820s, shaping the early careers of writers who would later be read as Victorian; responses to the textual and material relics of the Romantic poets as a cliché of Victorian tourism; Wordsworth’s insistence on portraying simple people and rural life, and his influence on the novels of Eliot and Hardy; a revolution in literary language; gender and class identities and conflicts; versions of social and political radicalism in the wake of the French Revolution; publication in a changing literary marketplace; popular genres such as Gothic and sensation fiction.

A consideration of the figure of the poet will involve conflicting notions of engagement with contemporary society and the need for solitary reflection; the emergence of innovative poetic forms such as the dramatic monologue and a new kind of epic; literary representations of individual psychology and an increasing fascination with extreme mental states. We will examine the impact of scientific discoveries and philosophical and religious discourses on literary culture. We will relate English literature to its global context, exploring conceptions of nationalism and democracy in relation to cosmopolitanism, the construction of Europe in the nineteenth century, philhellenism, Orientalism and imperialism.

Teaching Mode: 3-hour seminar, including lecture-type input from the tutor.

30 credits. Shakespeare and the Early Modern Shakespeare and the Early Modern 30 credits

This module looks at the role and development of major early modern thinkers and writers within the context of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Drawing on a range of philosophy, literature, religious writing and political thought, we explore the ways in which Shakespeare stages some of the major concerns of his day within the context of intellectual innovations across Europe c1400-1600.

30 credits. Postcolonial Fiction: Theory and Practice Postcolonial Fiction: Theory and Practice 30 credits

Much of the most significant and powerful contemporary fiction in English is written by those who come, or whose families have come, from outside the metropolitan and erstwhile imperial centre. This fiction is often called ‘postcolonial’, though there are those who would debate that term, as many do all aspects of the body of theory about the relation of the West and the rest of the world that has come to be known as ‘postcolonial theory’. Some would prefer the term ‘world’ or ‘transnational’ literature, for reasons we will discuss. This option divides its attention between the analysis of postcolonial fiction and postcolonial theory. Theorists to be studied will include Fanon, Said, Spivak, Ahmad and McClintock, along with a variety of writers such as Lessing, Achebe, Rhys, Rushdie and Coetzee.

30 credits. Postmodernist Fiction Postmodernist Fiction 30 credits

This option focuses on the analysis of key novels published between 1941 and 1991. Disparate in many ways, the texts are united by their frequent placement within the flexible category of international ‘postmodernism’. We will be reading the novels alongside both literary-critical constructions of postmodernism(s) and broader theoretical accounts of postmodernity. The aim of the module is not to isolate a definition of ‘postmodernist fiction’ through which the novels should be read, but rather to explore a range of sometimes contradictory theoretical paradigms and textual practices. Areas of inquiry will include: the relationships between ‘modernist’, ‘postmodernist’ and ‘realist’ poetics; the politics of form; postmodernism and historiography; postmodernism and postcolonialism; feminism and postmodernism.

Texts will typically include: Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts; Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable (The Beckett Trilogy); Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy; Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller; Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Salman Rushdie, Shame; Angela Carter, Wise Children. The module reader will be Patricia Waugh (ed.), Postmodernism: A Reader (London: Arnold, 1992). Other important essays will be made available as handouts.

30 credits. Rewriting Sexualities Rewriting Sexualities 30 credits

This module will examine the relationship between narrative and sexual identity through focusing on a variety of narrative structures and their relationship to late 19th- and 20th-century constructions of selfhood and sexuality. We will examine genres such as the case study, autobiography, confession, the novel and poetry to test the hypothesis that modern sexual identity is produced by the imperative to “tell the truth of sex”. In addition to Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Fanon, Foucault and Butler, we will examine a selection of texts, which will be chosen with reference to students’ particular interests but which might include Oscar Wilde, Radclyffe Hall, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, Adrienne Rich or Jean Genet.

30 credits. Literature and Philosophy Literature and Philosophy 30 credits

Why is it that literature has held such insistent fascination for modern philosophers? What is at stake for philosophy in the fact that literature exists? Is the strict Platonic separation of literature from philosophy still tenable? By focusing on a number of seminal modern European philosophical texts on literature, this module will seek to explore these questions from a number of different perspectives. In particular, it will show how this preoccupation with literature is the consequence of modern philosophy’s ongoing interrogation of its own limits. Philosophers to be studied include Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Blanchot.

30 credits. Twentieth-Century American Poetry: Theory in Practice Twentieth-Century American Poetry: Theory in Practice 30 credits

This module will explore the varied voices of poetry in the United States from 1940 to the present. In its survey of distinctively American styles, it will also consider notable works of 'confessional' poetry, the New York school, the position of women poets, the thematics of history, and critical definitions of Americanness in poetry. Poets to be studied will include Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Wilbur, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Adrienne Rich, Louise Gluck, Mark Strand, and Charles Simic.

30 credits. Romantic Shakespeare Romantic Shakespeare 30 credits

Romantic writers, such as Coleridge, Hazlitt, Byron, Schiller, A. W. Schlegel, and Percy and Mary Shelley, were all obsessed with Shakespeare. His plays, his poetry and his mind were persistent objects of discussion and speculation among these later writers, who also quoted his words, sometimes obviously, sometimes subtly, in their other writings.

Yet this common preoccupation with Shakespeare often took the form of violent disagreement and competition. This module investigates, mainly within British literary culture, the nature and extent of the Romantic obsession with finding, keeping, improving, vandalising, copying and using Shakespeare, his meaning and his power.

To that end, the module pursues three lines of inquiry: first, it focuses on a small selection of Shakespeare’s plays and considers how different Romantic writers regard each one, in the literary and theatrical criticism that they devote to that play and to contemporary productions of it; secondly, the module examines a small selection of plays composed by Romantic writers themselves in response to Shakespeare’s plays; thirdly, it investigates how Shakespeare’s work was presented by earlier editors and theatre practitioners in the eighteenth century to the Romantics, and how the Romantics have in turn conveyed Shakespeare’s work to us, as we read it in seminars and watch it at The Globe Theatre and in Hollywood movies.

Other issues that will be addressed along the way are the historical development of literary and dramatic criticism itself, the agency of women in literary culture, and literature as a tool in the education of children.

30 credits. The Contemporary American Novel in the Era of Climate Change The Contemporary American Novel in the Era of Climate Change 30 credits

In the era in which human activity, particularly fossil-fuel use and its effects, has become the main determinant in shaping the environment – an era which has been labelled the ‘Anthropocene’ – a growing body of literary work has emerged that seeks to explore the inextricability of social and natural damage and devastation.

This module considers the engagement of contemporary American fiction with a range of environmental crises, from climate change to pollution to ecological collapse. Generally speaking, the module asks what cognitive, interpretive and aesthetic resources are offered by the contemporary American novel in understanding such crises and catastrophes and in what ways has fiction evolved and adapted to capture this subject matter.

More particularly, the module asks how fiction might generate affective and politically transformative forms of public knowledge in the face of widespread dissociation of the consequences of a fossil-fuelled modernity, and, relatedly, how fiction might understand the social causes of natural disasters; how literature can chart or remember the geopolitical histories of energy supply and resource capitalism – histories that might include war, terrorism and pollution – that are normally forgotten at the point of Western consumption; how literature can encompass both the global scale and local impact of climate change and environmental degradation, as well as forge a sense of (eco)cosmopolitan solidarity between variously affected societies; how narrative can adapt to the subject matter of the ‘slow violence’ of pollution, contamination and man-made ‘natural’ disasters, and to the precarious and at-risk subjectivities produced by such violence; what kind of politics and ethics arise from such representations and how might literature engage with questions of environmental justice; and, in terms of worse-case scenarios, how literature imagines apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios of a world of spent resources and barely sustainable life.

30 credits. Interculturality, Text, Poetics Interculturality, Text, Poetics 30 credits

‘Interculturality, Text, Poetics’ explores interpretative theories of interculturality including creolisation, poetics of relation, postcolonialism and carnivalisation in