Module Information
Course Delivery
| Delivery Type | Delivery length / details |
|---|---|
| Seminars / Tutorials | Weekly two hour seminar |
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Semester Assessment | Two x 3000 word essays | |
| Supplementary Assessment | Resit or resubmit failed elements and/or make good any missing elements |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module, students should be able to:
1. Demonstrate knowledge of a range of women's fiction from the interwar period and be able to describe, compare and evaluate this fiction in its historical context.
2. Consider and evaluate the way in which women writers experiment with narrative technique and to identify and articulate the key themes and concerns of women's fiction of this period.
3. Engage with current critical and theoretical debates about women's writing of this period in relation to the texts studied on the module.
4. Write about the subject in a well-structured and argued manner.
Content
Weeks 2-3: Women Writing War
2. Memory: Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918)
3. Elegy: Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room (1922)
Weeks 4-6: Short Stories
4. Selection from Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party (1922)
5. Selection from Dorothy Edwards, Rhapsody (1929)
6. Taking Stock Session: this is a `summing up' seminar to gauge what has been learned at this mid-way point on the module and will involve students each presenting a short presentation on some of the key issues that have emerged from the set texts read so far.
Weeks 7-10: Women Writing Place
7. Border Country: Margiad Evans, Country Dance (1932)
8. Writing Wales: Eiluned Lewis, Dew on the Grass (1934)
9. Yorkshire Life: Winifred Holtby, South Riding: An English Landscape (1936)
10. Cornish Gothic: Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
Brief description
This option module explores women's fiction from Wales and England published in the years between the end of the First World War and the outbreak of the Second World War. The module explores a range of women's fiction (novels and short stories) from this period in the light of the following three key areas: women's writing about war; women's use of the short story form; the imagining of national and domestic place between the wars. The module will also consider issues of gender and sexuality, attitudes to motherhood, marriage and childhood, representations of femininity, houses and domestic space, and women's social roles. We will also be investigating narrative techniques, the use of genre and women fiction writers' relations to more mainstream ideas about Modernism usually applied to this period of literary history (which students will have encountered on the second-year core module).
Module Skills
| Skills Type | Skills details |
|---|---|
| Application of Number | n/a |
| Communication | Written communication in the form of essays, oral communication in seminar discussion and team presentations |
| Improving own Learning and Performance | Developing own research skills, management of time |
| Information Technology | Use of electronic resources (JSTOR, websites), production of written work |
| Personal Development and Career planning | Critical reflection and the development of transferable communication skills |
| Problem solving | Formulating and developing extended arguments |
| Research skills | Relating literary texts to historical contexts and theoretical commentaries, and by synthesizing various perspectives in an evaluative argument |
| Subject Specific Skills | Detailed critical and contextual analysis of literary texts and evaluation of theoretical concepts |
| Team work | Group preparation and presentations in seminars |
Reading List
Should Be PurchasedDu Maurier, Daphne Rebecca Primo search Edwards, Dorothy (1929) Rhapsody Primo search Evans, Margiad Country Dance Primo search Holtby, Winifred South Riding: An English Landscape Primo search Lewis, Eiluned Dew on the Grass Primo search Mansfield, Katherine The Garden Party Primo search West, Rebecca The Return of the Soldier Primo search Woolf, Virginia Jacob's Room Primo search Supplementary Text
Ayres, David (1999) English Literature of the 1920's Primo search Clay, Catherine (2006) British Women Writers 1914-1945: professional work and friendship Primo search Gramich, Katie (2007) Twentieth Century Women's Writing in Wales: Land, Gender, Belonging Primo search Hopkins, Chris (2007) English Fiction in the 1930's: language, genre, history Primo search Ingham, Heather (1998) Women's Fiction between the Wars: mothers, daughters, and writing Primo search Light, Alison (1991) Forever England femininity, literature and conservatism between the the wars Primo search Maslen, Elizabeth (2001) Political and Social Issues on British Women's Fiction 1928-1968 Primo search Nesbitt, Jennifer Poulos (2005) Narrative Settlements: georgraphies of British women's fiction between the wars Primo search Oudit, Sharon (1999) Women Writers of the First World War: an annotated bibliography Primo search Purvis, June (2000) Women's History: Britain, 1850-1945: an introduction Primo search Raitt, Suzanne Tate, Trudi (1997) Women's fiction and the Great War Primo search
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 6