THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2017/2018

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Postgraduate Course: Literature and Modernity I: Modernist Aesthetics (ENLI11181)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryModernist Aesthetics is the semester 1 core course for the MSc Literature and Modernity and is restricted to students on that programme. The course explores key texts and topics in modernist literature of the first half of the twentieth century, alongside cultural, historical and intellectual contexts, and a range of critical and theoretical approaches.
Course description Modernist Aesthetics explores some of the landmarks of literary modernism of the first half of the twentieth century, with an emphasis placed on the close reading of literary writings in relation to cultural and historical contexts - such as empire, war, totalitarianism - and alongside critical engagement with intellectual historical contexts, such as psychoanalysis, Marxism, and feminism.

Indicative seminar schedule for 2017-18

Week 1: No core course seminar

Week 2: Modernism and Empire: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899/1902)

Week 3: Manifestos, Traditions and Innovations: T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922); Mina Loy, selected poems from The Lost Lunar Baedeker (1997)

Week 4: Modernism and Gender: Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories

Week 5: Psychoanalysis and Sexuality: D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love (1920)

Week 6: Modernism and War: Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918), Selected Poetry of the First World War

Week 7: Time, Memory, and History: Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925) Proust, extracts from In Search of Lost Time (1913-27)

Week 8: Modernism and Everything: James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

Week 9: Modernism and the American Dream: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925); Langston Hughes, A Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

Week 10: Modernism and Totalitarianism: Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925)

Week 11: Modernism and its Legacies: Beckett, Molloy (1951)
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  36
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 176 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One essay of 4,000 words (100%)
Feedback Postgraduate students submit a 1,000-word essay outline in the second half of the course (usually Week 10 or 11), and receive formative written feedback within 10 working days. Written feedback and provisional marks (double-marked in the Department, subject to external moderation) are returned within 15 working days.

Students are also welcome to visit the tutor in office hours or by appointment to discuss their work and receive oral feedback on the outline and/or assessment.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Read and critically engage with complex literary, critical, and theoretical texts.
  2. Acquire a critical vocabulary for the analysis of literary texts.
  3. Develop a broad understanding of the main movements and schools in modernist literature and thought along with some knowledge of pre-twentieth-century literary and critical movements.
  4. Read further and more widely in literary and cultural theory, having gained the requisite background knowledge and critical vocabulary.
Reading List
Talis Aspire Resource List
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsLaM1,literature,modernity,modernism,aesthetics
Contacts
Course organiserDr Simon Cooke
Tel: (0131 6)51 3996
Email: Simon.Cooke@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Kara Mccormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk
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