Overview
A study of major texts of prose fiction from James Joyce and William Faulkner to the present day.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were times of unprecedented change to economic, cultural and political structures in Europe and America. Marx’s theories of class struggle, Freud’s theories of the unconscious, Darwin’s theories of evolution, and Einstein’s theory of relativity all made the world a more complicated place. Women’s demands for suffrage threatened order in the home, the invention of the airplane made the world seem smaller, and the x-ray exposed the body under the skin. The 1918-19 influenza pandemic, trauma from the First World War, and anxiety about rapid urbanisation and increasing dependency on technology added to the sense of rupture.
Many writers of the time felt that the literary techniques of the nineteenth century, particularly literary realism, were no longer capable of responding to the changes in society. They engaged with this sense of transformation by rallying to Ezra Pound’s call to ‘make it new’ and experimented with new ways of telling stories, new ways of presenting characters, new ways of representing life, and new ways of changing the world.
We will read texts that grapple with both the positive and negative aspects of living in a time of such rapid change and uncertainty about the future. We will also look at texts that engage with modernist legacies.
About this paper
| Paper title | Modernist Fiction |
|---|---|
| Subject | English |
| EFTS | 0.1500 |
| Points | 18 points |
| Teaching period(s) | Semester 1
(Distance learning)
Semester 1 (On campus) |
| Delivery mode | The Distance Learning offering of this paper is taught and assessed remotely |
| Domestic Tuition Fees ( NZD ) | $1,103.10 |
| International Tuition Fees | Tuition Fees for international students are elsewhere on this website. |
- Prerequisite
- 18 200-level ENGL points
- Schedule C
- Arts and Music
- Notes
- Students who have not passed the normal prerequisite may be admitted with approval from the Head of Department.
- Contact
- More information link
- View more information on the Department of English and Linguistics' website
- Teaching staff
Professor Maebh Long
- Textbooks
- Flann O’Brien – At Swim Two Birds
- Rebecca West – Return of the Soldier
- Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway
- Jean Rhys – Voyage in the Dark
- Elizabeth Bowen – The Last September
- Anna Burns - Milkman
Excerpts of other texts will be made available online
- Graduate Attributes Emphasised
Interdisciplinary perspective, Lifelong learning, Communication, Critical thinking, Cultural understanding, Information literacy, Research.
View more information about Otago's graduate attributes.- Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete this paper will:
- Enhance their essay writing skills
- Be to understand the way form and style is used to express and question the modern human experience,
- Further develop critical thinking skills by analysing modernist texts and constructing arguments about them
- Engage with literary texts that reflect the diversity of modernity and modernism
- Further develop skills to locate, evaluate, and incorporate relevant source materials