CODE | ENG5073 | ||||||||
TITLE | Putting Modernism Together | ||||||||
UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||
MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||
ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||
DEPARTMENT | English | ||||||||
DESCRIPTION | The focus in this unit is mainly, but not exclusively, on the fin-de-siècle poets, namely, Baudelaire, Valéry, Verlaine, Laforgue etc and their influence on Yeats, Wilde, Eliot, Pound, Proust, Stein, Joyce, Woolf and others. The unit explores the multiple beginnings that characterise the period. Themes discussed will be: The role of the disinherited and disinterested Narcissus; The flanêur/dandy - poetics of anguish and disenchantment in Wilde and the early Eliot; Remembering and the sound of words - links between sound effects and the representation of memory in literary texts; The acoustic surface of the text - Yeats's incantations; the themes of memory, imagination and recollection in Stein; Proust's musical syntax; Joyce's memory-rhymes - significant speech lapses; Beckett's prose and drama of stillness; Referentiality and the concept of 'undecidability' in Woolf. Added to this, there will also be focus on the essayistic, including the close readings of Prefaces, non-fiction, and the modernist essay, focusing mainly but not exclusively on Virginia Woolf. Study-Unit Aims: - To nurture an appreciation of comparative and interdisciplinary studies; - To come to terms with a variety of perspectives on the poetry of contemporary philosophies and writings, including that of the French Symbolists and of writers in England at the turn of the twentieth century; - To engage with critiques of theories and to trace the development of literature in the period; - To cultivate further the practice of close readings of chosen texts; - To enhance knowledge of Modernist poetics. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Come to firm grips with Modernist poetics, critique and theory; - Read Modernist texts differently from how they read more traditional ones; - Absorb that this new way of writing involves fragmentation, deconstruction as well as a panaesthetic approach to the arts. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Discern the varieties of literatures of the period; - Cultivate and nurture an analytic response to literature; - Approach a 'reading' of the arts as both separate entities as well as what Daniel Albright calls 'the panaesthetic approach'. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Albright, D., Panaesthetics: On the Unity and Diversity of the Arts (Yale: Yale University Press, 2014) - Eliot, T.S., Collected Poems 1909-1962 (London: Faber & Faber, 2002) - James, H., The Art of the Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) - Joyce, J., Ulysses (Penguin Books Ltd., 2000) - Pound, E., The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1972) - Symons, A., The Symbolist Movement in Literature (Kessinger Pub Co., 2004) - Valéry, P., The Art of Poetry (Princeton University Press, 1989) - Woolf, V., 'Modern Fiction' in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 1925-1928, vol. 4, ed. by A. MacNeille (London: The Hogarth Press, 1984) - Mrs Dalloway (London: Everyman, 1993) - 'The Death of the Moth' and Other essays (New York: Mariner Books, 1974) Supplementary Readings: - Conrad, J., 'The Nigger of the Narcissus' (London: Heinemann, 2016) - Faherty, M., The Poetry of WB Yeats (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) - Frey, A.J., Studies in Poetic Discourse (Stanford University Press, 1996) - Howe, E.A., Stages of Self (Ohio University Press, 1990) - MacCabe C., James Joyce and the Revolution of the Word (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) - Prendergast, C., Nineteenth Century French Poetry: Introductions to Close Reading (Cambridge University Press, 1990) - Whitworth, M., Virginia Woolf: Authors in Context (Oxford University Press, 2005 These books are all available at the University Library as well as online. |
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STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Seminar | ||||||||
METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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LECTURER/S | Aaron Aquilina Maria Frendo |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |