Aims and Objectives:

Along with the primary materials, we will engage with theoretical concerns involved in contemporary presentations of love, as well as reflect on the evolution of various discourses presented in contemporary fiction and their interplay with real life, including their responses to current politics, postmodernity, gender issues and race relationships.

Given its practice-led focus, students will submit writing to be workshopped after Reading Week.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a thorough understanding of how to write a compelling contemporary realist narrative centred on love and conflict.
• Demonstrate a creative and critical participative approach to contemporary realism its trends.
• Demonstrate practice in the writing of contemporary realist fiction, experimental takes on fiction and critical responses to the genre.
• Demonstrate an understanding of current narrative trends and of where their work fits into them, as well as what they can do differently.

Teaching Methods:

Assessment:

5000 words of contemporary realist fiction.

In the first five weeks, we'll be doing reading-led seminars with practical activities. After Reading Week, we'll have writing workshops, where students will submit work for the class.

Alice McDermott, 'Someone'

Kristen Roupenian,' Cat Person' + Interview

Jonathan Safran Foer, 'Love is Blind and Deaf'

The 'Forbidden Love' Trope

Just Like You, Nick Hornby

Normal People, Sally Rooney

Open Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson

Annie Proulx, 'Brokeback Mountain'

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

Workshops (weeks 7-10)

You will be asked to submit work the week prior to your workshop slot. You'll be given a workshop slot early in the term. It is very important that you submit on time so that everyone gets to read and edit your work with care. Submission guidelines will be provided at the start of term.

Further Reading:

• Olivia Sudjic, Asylum Road
• Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women
• Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves
• Catherine Lacey, The Answers
• Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
• Alice Munro, The Love of a Good Woman
• Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
• Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
• Joe Dunthorne, Submarine
• Eliza Clark, Boy Parts
• Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
• Ernest Hemingway, 'Hills Like White Elephants'
• Sherman Alexie, ‘Bird-Watching At Night’ in War Dances.
• Lorrie Moore, 'You're Ugly, Too'
• Robert Coover, 'Matinée'
• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, 'Aphrodisiac'
• The New Psychology of Love, Robert J. Sternberg and Karin Sternberg, eds.