Module Identifier ENM4120  
Module Title METAFICTIONAL EXPERIMENTS IN THE POSTMODERN NOVEL  
Academic Year 2000/2001  
Semester Semester 2  
Other staff Dr Timothy Woods, Professor Lyn Pykett  
Course delivery Seminar   2 hours per week  
Assessment Essay   1 x 5,000 word essay    

Content
This option will focus on postmodern experiments within the genre of the English-language novel in both contemporary British and American writing, and specifically at the way in which history is reconfigured, rewritten, and reshaped, as it increasingly becomes the critical site of the formation of cultural identity. The range of novels will embrace formal experimentation, challenges to the modes of representation traditionally associated with the novel, and a concern with the gender and racial implications of postmodernism in the novel.

1. Fiction and Postmodernity

Linda Hutcheson, The Politics of Postmodernism

2. The Construction of Postmodern Spaces

Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, The Passion of New Eve

3. Postmodernist Histories

Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry, Julian Barnes, The History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters,
Graham Swift, Waterland

4. Rewriting Fictions

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber, John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Donald Barthelme, Snow White

5. Race and Postermodernism

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, or Toni Morrison, Jazz