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

Undergraduate Course: Joyce and Style (ENLI10200)

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
Summary The course offers a general and immersive introduction to the work of James Joyce, perhaps the greatest modernist prose writer. No previous knowledge of Joyce's fiction is necessary: this course is specifically designed for the student who always wanted to study Joyce but wasn't really sure where to begin. It opens with a brief overview of modernist literary culture and narrative techniques as contexts for Joyce's novelistic and stylistic development.
Course description Each of Joyce's four major works (Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake) are then examined in turn within a seminar framework which places considerable emphasis upon collective close reading. This approach is particularly well-suited to Joyce because that fact that he 'only' published four masterpieces means that students may become familiar with all of his main published texts over the duration of the course. This emphasis upon chronology and collective close reading enables students to gain both the clearest possible insight into the development of Joyce's style and to begin to appreciate the historical contexts that inform his radicalisation and transformation of literary realism. Because Joyce's fiction, with its exploration of language, sexuality, consciousness, ethnicity, nationalism and imperialism has itself become central to many different critical styles of reading, the course will also encourage students to think self-consciously about the relationship between literature, aesthetics and politics. The course therefore aims to provide students with a detailed understanding of the work of one of the greatest modern writers, and to enhance their understanding of literary realism, modernist writing and culture, and the poetics and politics of postmodernism.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: ( Literary Studies 1A (ENLI08020) AND Literary Studies 1B (ENLI08021) OR English Literature 1 (ENLI08001) OR Scottish Literature 1 (ENLI08016)) AND ( Literary Studies 2A: English Literature in the World, 1380-1788 (ENLI08024) AND Literary Studies 2B: English Literature in the World, post-1789 (ENLI08025) OR Scottish Literature 2A (ENLI08022) AND Scottish Literature 2B (ENLI08023) OR English Literature 2 (ENLI08003) OR Scottish Literature 2 (ENLI08004))
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Additional Costs Essential course texts
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  12
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) Course essay of 2,000 words: 30% Examination essay of 3,000 words: 70%
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Construct informed, clear and coherent arguments about the fiction of James Joyce and the intellectual culture of literary modernism.
  2. Analyse literary texts using recognised methods of literary criticism to substantiate and illustrate those arguments.
  3. Bring developed close reading skills to bear on their own analyses of Joycean fiction and modernist literary style.
  4. Examine literary texts for evidence of new innovations in literary form and style, and illustrate their findings with examples from the fiction on the course.
  5. Orally present the results of research undertaken individually and as part of a small group, respond critically to such research undertaken by others, and critically evaluate the importance of such material for an understanding of the chief themes of the course.
Reading List
Week One: Course Introduction: Ideas and Contexts.

Week Two: Dubliners (1914): The Development of the Modernist Short Story.

Week Three: Dubliners 2: Gender and the Politics of Culture.

Week Four: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916): The Modern Novel and the Limits of Realism.

Week Five: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 2: Modernist Aesthetics and the Modernist Artist

Week Six: Ulysses (1922): Writing Beyond Realism.

Week Seven: Ulysses 2: Colonialism, Race and Power.

Week Eight: Essay Completion Week.

Week Nine: Ulysses 3: Modernism and Sexual Difference.

Week Ten: Ulysses 4: Modernism and the Unconscious.

Week Eleven: Finnegans Wake (1939): Modernism Beyond Modernism
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Special Arrangements Numbers are limited to 15, with priority given to students taking degrees involving English or Scottish Literature and Visiting Students placed by the Admissions Office. Students not in these categories need the written approval of the Head of English Literature before enrolling. In the case of excess applications places will be decided by ballot.
Additional Class Delivery Information 2 hour(s) per week for 10 week(s).
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Lee Spinks
Tel: (0131 6)50 3616
Email: Lee.Spinks@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Lina Gordyshevskaya
Tel:
Email: pgordysh@ed.ac.uk
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