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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2021/2022

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

Undergraduate Course: Modernism, Myth, and Romance 1880-1940 (ENLI10371)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course addresses modernism's investment in traditional narrative forms of myth, romance, and folk tales, and the systems of thought that they embodied.
Course description Although the archetypal modernist statement was Ezra Pound's 'make it new,' much avant garde writing of the period looked to the past to understand the present. This re-evaluation of the archaic, and its tropes of ordeal, rebirth, and renewal, provided inspiration for writers wrestling with the challenges of modernity: alienation, technological acceleration, and the aftermath of the Great War; as well as de-colonial movements, the reimagining of
gender roles, and the legacies of slavery. From the Celtic explorations of early W.B. Yeats to James Joyce's Homeric parallels, and from the Harlem Renaissance's adaptations of blues and jazz (rooted in West African cultural forms) to Virginia Woolf's recourse to English folk culture in the shadow of WWII, modernist writers' radical experiments in literary representation drew on the resources of the past. This course will therefore examine 'myth' and 'romance', not as a source of timeless archetypes representing an ahistorical human nature, but as a strategic resource on which writers draw in grappling with the disruptions and dislocations of modernity.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: ( English Literature 1 (ENLI08001) OR Scottish Literature 1 (ENLI08016)) AND ( English Literature 2 (ENLI08003) OR Scottish Literature 2 (ENLI08004))
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  34
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 22, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 174 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) 2500 word coursework essay (40%) submitted in week 9;
plus 3000 word final essay submitted during exam period at end of semester (60%).
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. demonstrate competency in core skills in the study of English Literature: essay-writing, independent reading, group discussion, small-group autonomous learning
  2. provide informed analysis of Modernist prose and poetry, in writing and in discussion.
  3. demonstrate knowledge of the uses of myth, romance, and folk forms and sources in Anglophone texts over a 60 year period.
  4. demonstrate the ability to reflect critically on a variety of critical and methodological approaches to Modernist poetry and prose.
Reading List
Syllabus:
An anthology of modernist manifestos and other sources
W.B. Yeats, The Major Works (1889-1939)
R.L. Stevenson, ¿The Beach of Falesá¿ (1892); extracts from In the South Seas (1896)
H.D., Selected Poems (1914-1935)
James Joyce, chapters from Ulysses (1922)
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
Scottish Renaissance (Hugh MacDiarmid, extract from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926); Nan Shepherd, poems from In the Cairngorms (1934))
Harlem Renaissance (selected folktales, poems, and prose works by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes (1921 - 1942))
Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)
Additional Information
Course URL https://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/current/honours
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Additional Class Delivery Information Seminar: 2 hours per week for 10 weeks;
plus attendance at Autonomous Learning Group for one hour per week - at time to be arranged
KeywordsMyth,Modernism,Romance,Scottish Literature,Irish Literature
Contacts
Course organiserDr David Farrier
Tel: (0131 6)50 3607
Email: David.Farrier@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMs Sheila Strathdee
Tel: (0131 6)50 3619
Email: S.Strathdee@ed.ac.uk
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