Modules

From Modernism to the Contemporary (TRU2011A)

15 credits

This module will provide you with a survey of literatures in English, from 1900 to the present, reading its focal texts in dialogue with their contemporary culture, politics, and society. It first focuses on the innovations in style and form, in prose and poetry that developed in the early years of the century. After exploring the emergence of high Modernism, the module turns to the changing cross-currents in post-war and mid-century literature, and last to the alterable understandings of modernity and identity in late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literary experimentation. As it traverses both canonical and marginalised literary works, this module investigates the relationships between art and identity politics, race, class and consumer culture, technology and gender, and the attempts to express conflict through literary style, literary elitism, and formal experimentalism in prose, poetry and drama.