2024-2025

Convenor: Mike Niblett (m.niblett@warwick.ac.uk)

Office hours: Tuesdays 5pm-6pm; Wednesdays 12pm-1pm. Sign up hereLink opens in a new window

Overview

This module is an introduction to some of the defining concerns, historical contexts and characteristic formal features of modern world literatures from 1789 to the present. The syllabus is divided into sections on literatures of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, nineteenth-century modernity and empire, modernism and world war, and the Cold War/decolonization period, with a focus on post-1989 writing in the third term. Teaching is by a weekly lecture and small-group seminar. Lectures introduce literary, historical and/or theoretical contexts as well as discussion of specific authors and works, while seminars involve closer discussion of the texts themselves.

The set texts we will be reading this year include the following:

Goethe, Faust Part I; Shelley, Frankenstein; Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”; Soseki, Kokoro; Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Lu Xun, “A Madman’s Diary”; Kafka, The Metamorphosis; Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children; Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land; Lispector, Hour of the Star; Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven

A full list of this year’s set texts, as well as a week-by-week breakdown of the lectures, can be found by following the tabs above (see ‘Lecture List’ and ‘Set Texts’)

For students whose home department is English, the following texts are provided to you for free: Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Stories and Natsume Soseki, Kokoro. You will be able to pick them up in Welcome Week.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module you should be able to
• Discuss a particular work of literature in relation to questions of modernity, the dynamics of innovation and tradition, and the role of social, cultural and (inter)national formations in shaping the context of literary production
• Engage more confidently in critical analysis, bibliographic research and presentations on topics relating to works of modern literature
• Participate in discussions and exercises regarding the role of literature in relation to other media, questions of institutional authority and contemporary cultural debates
• Make an informed choice of honours-level options in modern literary topics

Methods of assessment

First-year students: 2 x 2,500-word essays

Honours level (i.e., where the course is taken as an option by students not in their first year): 2 x 3,500-word essays (Level 5); 2 x 4,000-word essays (Level 6).

Visiting students: see guidance under Assessments

See Assessments 24/25Link opens in a new window for further information.

Essay deadlines

See essay deadlines published through the English Office.

Set Texts Reading List (Talis)Link opens in a new window

The reading list provides details of the set texts you will need to read for each week, as well as suggested further reading.

Franciso Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799)

Term 1 Handout

Term 2 Handout

Modernity Clinic

Research Skills: Researching Unfamiliar ConceptsLink opens in a new window

Research Skills: Researching for your AssignmentsLink opens in a new window

Other useful links:

Academic Writing ResourceLink opens in a new window