Postgraduate Course: Scottish Fiction 1880-1939 (ENLI11270)
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 | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will survey the development of fiction by Scottish writers from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s. The centre of its attention will be the arrival of Modernist forms and concerns in fiction written by women in the 1920s; the preceding three weeks will prepare for this by examining formal experimentation and controversy among writers of the fin de siècle, and after essay completion week the course will conclude by discussing novels and stories from the 1930s. |
| Course description |
This course will survey the development of Scottish fiction in this period by linking formal and thematic experimentation to social tensions and ideological conflict. The social context introduced will include political liberalisation, including the introduction of a universal male franchise in 1918 and its extension to women in 1928; the intensification of class conflict in the General Strike of 1926 and in the Depression of the 1930s; and the appeal of Soviet Communism as a solution to this social and political crisis.
The first three weeks will relate the new types of fiction being developed in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the very beginning of the twentieth to the social and political context to which it responded: the anti-realism of R.L. Stevenson, the formal expression of a scepticism towards political liberalism; the theological liberalism of sentimental Kailyard fiction, and the Naturalist backlash against this at the turn of the century; and the racialised aestheticism of Celticist narratives set in the Gáidhealtachd. The following four weeks will be spent studying fiction written by women in the 1920s, which in various ways interrogate the new opportunities, but also the unresolved social conflicts, that followed the Great War. The term essay, completed in week eight, will give students the chance to compare the fin de siècle texts with the post-war ones. Then in the last three weeks the course will turn to novels written in the 1930s, when the promise of Bolshevik revolution had risen to new heights, and the rise of Fascism prompted examinations of the course of human history, and the relation between science, democracy, and totalitarianism.
Each week, students will complete the assigned reading, both primary and secondary; watch/listen to a presentation by the course organiser on Learn outlining the social and cultural background to that weeks text; meet in an ALG to prepare a short report on a set question, then come to the seminar ready to explain and discuss that question and those set for the other ALGs. Evidence of their achievement of the intended learning outcomes will be provided by the final essay.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of the formal developments in Scottish fiction in relation to its social and political context between 1880 and 1939
- Produce close readings of narrative discourse that show a complex understanding of formal techniques and show a theoretically-informed grasp of the relationship between language, structure, genre and theme
- Critically evaluate and compare texts with reference to appropriate primary and secondary evidence
- Communicate critical arguments using appropriate academic English
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Reading List
Essential:
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae (Worlds Classics)
George Douglas Brown, The House with the Green Shutters (Polygon)
Catherine Carswell, Open the Door! (Canongate)
Nan Shepherd, The Quarry Wood (Canongate)
Louis Grassic Gibbon, A Scots Quair (Penguin)
Neil Gunn, Highland River (Canongate)
Recommended:
Anderson, Carol and Aileen Christianson, eds. Scottish Womens Fiction, 1920s to 1960s: Journeys into Being (EUP)
Brown, Richard Danson and Suman Gupta, eds. Aestheticism and Modernism: Debating Twentieth-Century Literature 1900-1960 (Routledge)
Dymock, Emma and Margery Palmer McCulloch, eds. Scottish and International Modernisms: Relationships and Reconfigurations (ASLS)
Fielding, Penny, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Louis Stevenson (EUP)
Gifford, Douglas and Dorothy McMillan, eds. A History of Scottish Womens Writing (EUP)
Hubble, Nick, Luke Seaber and Elinor Taylor, eds. The 1930s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction (Bloomsbury)
Nash, Andrew. Kailyard and Scottish Literature (Rodopi)
Norquay, Glenda, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Womens Writing (EUP)
Price, Richard. The Fabulous Matter of Fact: the Poetics of Neil M. Gunn (1991)
Shaw, Michael. The Fin-de-Siècle Scottish Revival: Romance, Decadence and Celtic Identity (EUP) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Skills in the critical analysis of language, and in particular of narrative; historical consciousness; ideological self-consciousness; skills in constructing rational and evidence-based argument; articulacy, scepticism, and curiosity. |
| Keywords | Scottish Literature,women¿s writing,fiction,the novel,Modernism |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Robert Irvine
Tel: (0131 6)50 3605
Email: R.P.Irvine@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Kara McCormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk |
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