Undergraduate Course: Modernism and Empire (ENLI10338)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | English Literature |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This course explores the relationship between European imperialism and literary modernism, focusing primarily on British colonial contexts and legacies (in South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific), but also engaging with other European empires (such as the French Caribbean and the Belgian Congo). We will analyse a range of texts published from the 1890s through to 1960, exploring the centrality of empire to various phases of literary modernism. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2011/12 Semester 1, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
WebCT enabled: Yes |
Quota: 15 |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Seminar | | 1-11 | 14:00 - 15:50 | | | | |
| First Class |
Week 1, Monday, 14:00 - 15:50, Zone: Central. Room 6.11, David Hume Tower |
| No Exam Information |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, through contributions to group discussion, independent reading, and assessed and non-assessed work, students will be able to:
-Understand the ways in which empire and its legacies has contributed to certain thematic and stylistic innovations in British (and other) literary modernism(s)
-Develop a critical vocabulary for analysing the thematics and aesthetics of modernist writing, drawing upon a range of theory and criticism (including, inter alia, formalist, Marxist, postmodernist and postcolonial perspectives)
-Analyse the active contribution of writers and cultures on the colonial $ùperiphery&© to developments in (and critiques of) literary modernism
-Articulate (in written and oral forms) a considered, informed sense of the breadth and range of responses to imperialism in course texts
-Reflect on good learning practice
|
Assessment Information
| One course essay (worth 25% of overall course mark) and one take-home exam essay (worth 75% of overall course mark). |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Week 1: Course introduction; Joseph Conrad, $ùAn Outpost of Progress&© (1897); Rudyard Kipling, $ùRegulus&© (1917)
Week 2: Miscegenation and degeneration: Rudyard Kipling, $ùKidnapped&© (1888); Robert Louis Stevenson, $ùThe Ebb Tide&©; Jack London, $ùGoodbye Jack&© (1909); W. Somerset Maugham, $ùRain&© (1921)
Week 3: Ezra Pound and $ùThe East&©: Pound&©s ideogrammatic poetry and the Chinese Cantos; RabindranathTagore&©s Gitanjali poems (1912)
Week 4: E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)
Week 5: Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable (1935)
Week 6: Leonard Woolf, $ùPearls and Swine&© (1921) and selected letters; George Orwell, $ùShooting an Elephant&© (1936)
Week 7: Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark (1937); selected stories by Katherine Mansfield
Week 8: READING WEEK
Week 9: Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939; using the Bloodaxe translation, Notebook of a Return to my Native Land (1995))
Week 10: Joyce Cary, Mister Johnson (1939) and $ùUmaru&© (1921)
Week 11: Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease (1960)
|
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Week 1: Joseph Conrad, $ùAn Outpost of Progress&© (1897); Rudyard Kipling, $ùRegulus&© (1917)
Week 2: Rudyard Kipling, $ùKidnapped&© (1888); Robert Louis Stevenson, $ùThe Ebb Tide&©; Jack London, $ùGoodbye Jack&© (1909); W. Somerset Maugham, $ùRain&© (1921)
Week 3: Pound&©s ideogrammatic poetry and the Chinese Cantos; RabindranathTagore&©s Gitanjali poems (1912)
Week 4: E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)
Week 5: Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable (1935)
Week 6: Leonard Woolf, $ùPearls and Swine&© (1921) and selected letters; George Orwell, $ùShooting an Elephant&© (1936)
Week 7: Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark (1937); selected stories by Katherine Mansfield
Week 8: READING WEEK
Week 9: Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939; using the Bloodaxe translation, Notebook of a Return to my Native Land (1995))
Week 10: Joyce Cary, Mister Johnson (1939) and $ùUmaru&© (1921)
Week 11: Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease (1960)
|
| Study Abroad |
n/a |
| Study Pattern |
11 x two hour seminars; students also meet weekly independently of CO in automonous learning groups |
| Keywords | modernism; empire; race; imperialism |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Michelle Keown
Tel: (0131 6)50 6856
Email: michelle.keown@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Catherine Williamson
Tel: (0131 6)50 3620
Email: Catherine.Williamson@ed.ac.uk |
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© Copyright 2011 The University of Edinburgh - 16 January 2012 6:07 am
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