Postgraduate Course: Modernism and Empire (ENLI11139)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | 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. Both late colonialism and modernism share many of the same structuring discourses, such as concerns over the decline and decay of 'Western' civilization, and a preoccupation with finding new ways of defining human subjectivity and alterity (in the wake of the collapse of enlightenment humanism, and the rise of psychoanalytical and social Darwinist paradigms). |
| Course description |
We will explore the relationship between anxieties about the imperialist project, and certain stylistic and thematic innovations in modernist literature, including: (i) the preoccupation with Western degeneration (which is interpreted by some modernist writers as a consequence of inter-racial contact and miscegenation, while others hold that Western culture can be revitalised by outside cultural and artistic influences); (ii) a preoccupation with multiple subjectivities and limited/unreliable narrators; (iii) experiments with symbolism and imagism as alternatives to Victorian realism and positivism. We will question the degree to which modernism was complicit with, or opposed to, imperialism, exploring texts produced by British authors (such as George Orwell, Leonard Woolf and Joyce Cary) who participated in the administration of British imperial territories, as well as the work of writers more peripheral to the workings of empire (such as Joseph Conrad, and women writers such as Jean Rhys and Katherine Mansfield). We will also consider how modernism was taken up by writers (such as Mulk Raj Anand and Aimé Césaire) situated at the colonial 'margins', investigating cross-cultural friendships and alliances (such as those between E.M. Forster and Mulk Raj Anand), as well as counter-discursive interventions by postcolonial writers such as Chinua Achebe, whose novel No Longer at Ease (1960) serves as a riposte to Cary's Mister Johnson (1939).
Indicative reading list for 2025/26:
Begam, Richard and Michael Valdez Moses (eds), Modernism and Colonialism: British and Irish Literature, 1899-1939 (Duke University Press, 2007).
Bradshaw, David and Kevin J.H. Dettmar (eds), A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture (Malden: Blackwell, 2006).
Boccardi, Mariadele, The Story of Colonial Adventure, in Malcolm, Cheryl Alexander and David Malcolm (eds) A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 19-34.
Childs, Peter. Modernism and the Post-Colonial: Literature and Empire (London: Continuum, 2007).
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Construct original, clear and coherent arguments about the ways in which modernist writing engages with imperialism and its legacies [linked to all assessed work: course essay and final essay].
- Analyse course texts, using recognised methods of literary criticism to substantiate and illustrate those arguments [linked to all assessed work: course essay and final essay].
- Analyse formal dimensions of modernist literary texts (such as language/style; structure; literary devices) and illustrate findings with close readings of examples from texts on the course [linked to all assessed work: course essay and final essay].
- Identify some of the different ways in which the relationship between modernity and empire has been explored and contested by authors on the course.[linked to all assessed work: course essay and final essay]
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Special Arrangements |
MSc only |
| Keywords | MaE |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Michelle Keown
Tel: (0131 6)50 6856
Email: michelle.keown@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Kara McCormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk |
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