Brief description
This module is organised so as to introduce the students to contemporary writing in English through several possible theoretical approaches. The theoretical framework and the theoretical issues implicit in the selction of course texts look forward to issues that the students will encounter at a more advanced level in their later modules. The texts represent a wide range of forms, styles and languages of contemporary literature: strict form verse, tales, short fiction, drama, film, elements of pulp fiction, modernist and post-modernist fiction.

Outline syllabus
This module will introduce you to range of contemporary writing in English covering a wide variety of forms, styles, and linguistic registers: tales, short-fiction, poetry, drama, film-adaptations, elements of pulp fiction, modernist and post-modernist fiction. The set texts raise a number of critical issues concerning literary form and language, cultural positioning and social identity. They are arranged under four thematic headings: 'Class', 'Negotiating Identities', 'Sexual Dissidence' and Travelling Generations'. This approach will enable you to engage with the sort of theoretical work you will encounter at a higher level in Part Two.

There will be two lectures each week. Each topic will be introduced in a general lecture, and each of the set texts will be examined in two lectures, one specifically on the text, the other on a wider range of issues raised by the text.

In the seminars, students can present and investigate their own ideas on the meaning and worth of the set texts. What has the text communicated to you personally, and how does your opinion relate to those of other students and critics?

Assessment
This module will be examined by continuous assessment (50%), and an examination paper (50%). Students will write two 1,500-2,000 word essays during the semester. There will be a two hour, two question examination paper at the end of semester 2.

Set Texts
Class:
Tony Harrison, Selected Poems (Penguin, 1995)
A.S. Byatt, Elementals, 1998

Negotiating Identities:
Karen McCarthy (ed.) Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry (Two Women's Press, 1998)
Caryl Phillips, The Nature of Blood (Faber, 1997)

Dissident Desires:
Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (Vintage 1996)
Jonathan Harvey, Beautiful Things (Methuen, 1996)

Travelling Generations:
Esther Freud, Hideous Kinky (Penguin 1999)
Alex Garland, The Beach (Penguin, 1996)
(Subject to release of videos, we shall also consider the new film adaptations of both titles)