Module Identifier ENM4120  
Module Title METAFICTIONAL EXPERIMENTS IN THE POSTMODERN NOVEL  
Academic Year 2001/2002  
Co-ordinator To Be Arranged  
Semester Semester 2  
Other staff Professor Lyn Pykett, Dr Timothy Woods  
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