Module Identifier |
EN32320 |
Module Title |
THE POLITICS OF MODERNISM |
Academic Year |
2004/2005 |
Co-ordinator |
Professor Timothy S Woods |
Semester |
Intended for use in future years |
Next year offered |
N/A |
Next semester offered |
N/A |
Course delivery |
Seminars / Tutorials | 20 Hours Seminar. 10 x 2 hrs |
Assessment |
Assessment Type | Assessment Length/Details | Proportion |
Semester Assessment | Continuous Assessment: 2 essays (2,500 words each) | 100% |
Supplementary Assessment | Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements. | |
|
Learning outcomes
At the end of the module, students will be able to:
1. describe and appraise the main theories of and debates within modernism;
2. relate theories and practices of modernism to set texts;
3. describe the broad effects of modernist devices on literary and cultural forms;
4. apply examples from the arguments of principal exponents of modernist theory;
5. comment critically on the material chosen for study;
6. engage in coherent oral discussion of the texts and background material;
7. write about the subject in a well-structured and argued manner.
Aims
The principal aim of this module will be to familiarise students with the variety of debates centring upon the problematic of modernism, but in particular, to consider whether one can perceive and describe the political ideologies underpinning the various aesthetics of modernism.
Brief description
By focusing on a selection of texts from the 'high' modernist canon, the following issues might be explored:
-
what were the relations between the aesthetic ideologies of modernism and its emergence within a specific historical and social formation?
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whether modernist aesthetics were a radical break with conventional forms of knowledge, or whether they were merely a search for a new realism;
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why the issue of representation and language becomes so crucial to artists during this period;
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why modernist art is 'difficult';
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why certain writers have been excluded from the 'canon';
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the role of the avant-garde;
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the way in which modern art has been gendered;
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the definitions and distinctions between modernism and postmodernism evident in the work of such theorists as Luckacs, Adorno, Brecht, Benjamin, Jameson and Lyotard.
Content
MODULE OUTLINE
Seminar 1: Introduction: Modernism, Modernity, Modernization
Seminar 2: Aestheticism, Myth and Politics
-
W B Yeats - The Tower; The Winding Stair; extracts from A Vision
Seminar 3: Culture and Hegemony: "Articulate Raids"
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T S Eliot - Tradition and the Individual Talent; Four Quartets; Ash Wednesday
Seminar 4: A Modernist Odyssey: 'Myth and Order'
Seminar 5: 'Curios of signs' and 'alphabettyformed verbiage'
-
James Joyce - Ulysses; Finnegan's Wake (extracts)
Seminar 6: Engendering a Modernist Aesthetic
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Gertrude Stein - Tender Buttons
Seminar 7: Imagism and the Object: "Dichten = Condensare"
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Ezra Pound - Hugh Selwyn Mauberley; The Cantos
Seminar 8: Myth, History and Herself Defined
Seminar 9: Gender, Language and Silence
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Virginia Woolf - The Waves
Seminar 10: Power/Knowledge/Gender
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D. H. Lawrence - The Rainbow
Bibliography
The Hugh Owen Library is well stocked with texts in this field and on these authors, and is extremely well supplemented by the texts in the National Library. A short indicative bibliography is listed below, but specific bibliographies on the module subjects will be handed out on a weekly basis.
Reading Lists
Books
** Should Be Purchased
W. B. Yeats (ed. T Webb) Selected Poems
Penguin
James Joyce Ulysses
Penguin
T. S. Eliot Collected Poems
Faber
Virginia Woolf The Waves
Penguin
H.D. Trilogy
New Directions
Gertrude Stein Tender Buttons
Dover
D. H. Lawrence The Rainbow
Penguin
Ezra Pound Selected Poems 1908-1959
Faber
** Recommended Background
Fuller, Peter (1983) Aesthetics After Modernism
Writers and Readers Publishing Co-Op
Huyssen, Andreas (1988) After the Great Divide
Macmillan
Lukacs, Georg, 'The Ideology of Modernism', in (1963) The Meaning of Contemporary Realism
Merlin Press
Lunn, Eugene (1987) Marxism and Modernism
Verso
Josipovici, Gabriel (1977) The Lessons of Modernism
Macmillan
Moretti, Franco (1983) Signs Taken For Wonders
Verso
Reiss, Timothy J. (1982) The Discourse of Modernism
Cornell U.P.
Ross, Andrew (1986) The Failure of Modernism
Columbia U.P.
Bradbury, Malcolm, and McFarlane, James, (eds.) (1976) Modernism: 1890-1930
Penguin
Berman, Marshall (1983) All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
Verso
Bergonzi, Bernard (1986) The Myth of Modernism
Harvester
Berger, John (1969) The Moment of Cubism
Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Benjamin,Walter (1983) Understanding Brecht
Verso
Benjamin,Walter, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Hannah Arendt (ed.), (1973) Illuminations
Fontana
Benjamin, A, (ed). (1990) The Problems of Modernity
Routledge
Bell, Daniel (1976) The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
Heinemann
Barker, Francis, et.al. (1979) The Sociology of Literature: Vol 1: The Politics of Modernism
University of Essex
Foster, Hal (1983) The Anti-Aesthetic
Bay Press
Fokkema, D.W. (1987) Modernist Conjectures
C.Hurst
Collier, Peter, and Davies, Judy, (eds.) (1990) Modernism and the European Unconscious
St.Martin's Press
Breton, Andre (1978) What is Surrealism?
Pluto Press
Spender, Stephen (1963) The Struggle of the Modern
California U.P.
Stead, C.K. (1986) Pound, Yeats and Eliot and the Modernist Movement
Macmillan
Svarny, E. (1988) "The Men of 1914"
Open U.P.
Taylor, Ronald, (ed). (1980) Aesthetics and Politics
Verso
White, Allon (1981) The Uses of Obscurity: The Fiction of Early Modernism
RKP
Williams, Raymond (1961) Culture and Society, 1780-1950
Penguin
Williams, Raymond (1990) The Politics of Modernism
Verso
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 6