EN32320 - THE POLITICS OF MODERNISM

Module Identifier

EN32320

Module Title

THE POLITICS OF MODERNISM

Academic Year

2005/2006

Co-ordinator

Dr Luke A Thurston

Semester

Semester 1

Course delivery

Seminars / Tutorials

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. Where this involves re-submission of work, a new topic must be selected.

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?
whether modernist aesthetics were a radical break with conventional forms of knowledge, or whether they were merely a search for a new realism;
why the issue of representation and language becomes so crucial to artists during this period;
why modernist art is 'difficult';
why certain writers have been excluded from the 'canon';
the role of the avant-garde;
the way in which modern art has been gendered;
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

1. Introduction: What is the Modern?
2. Aestheticism and Myth: Yeats,
W B Yeats - "The Tower"; "The Winding Stair"; "A Vision" (extracts)
3. Culture and Hegemony: Eliot
T S Eliot "The Waste Land"; "Tradition and the Individual Talent"; "Four Quartets"
4. Language and Gender: Woolf
Virginia Woolf "The Waves"
5. Location and Dislocation: Joyce (I)
James Joyce "Ulysses" (1)
6. Proteiform Graph: Joyce (II,
James Joyce - "Ulysses" (2), "Finnegans Wake" (extracts)
7. Image and Object: Pound and H.D.
Ezra Pound - "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley"; "The Cantos"; H.D. "Trilogy"
8. Complicated Simplicity: Stein
Gertrude Stein - "Tender Buttons"; "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas"
9. Poems of the Mind: Stevens
Wallace Stevens "Harmonium"; "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"
10. The Ends of Modernism: Beckett
Samuel Beckett - "Endgame"

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
Ezra Pound Selected Poems 1908-1959 Faber
H.D. Trilogy New Directions
Gertrude Stein Tender Buttons Dover
Samuel Beckett Endgame Faber
Wallace Stevens Selected Poems Faber
Virginia Woolf The Waves Penguin
** Recommended Consultation
Levenson, Michael (ed) (1999) Cambridge Companion to Modernism CUP
Longembach, James (1991) Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things OUP
Levenson, Michael (Ed) (1984) A Genealogy of Modernism CUP
** Recommended Background
Barker, Francis, et.al. (1979) The Sociology of Literature: Vol 1: The Politics of Modernism University of Essex
Bell, Daniel (1976) The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism Heinemann
Benjamin, A, (ed). (1990) The Problems of Modernity Routledge
Benjamin,Walter, (1973) Illuminations The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproductions Fontana
Benjamin,Walter (1983) Understanding Brecht Verso
Bergonzi, Bernard (1986) The Myth of Modernism Harvester
Berman, Marshall (1983) All That Is Solid Melts Into Air Verso
Bradbury, Malcolm, and McFarlane, James, (eds.) (1976) Modernism: 1890-1930 Penguin
Collier, Peter, and Davies, Judy, (eds.) (1990) Modernism and the European Unconscious St.Martin's Press
Fokkema, D.W. (1987) Modernist Conjectures C.Hurst
Foster, Hal (1983) The Anti-Aesthetic Bay Press
Fuller, Peter (1983) Aesthetics After Modernism Writers and Readers Publishing Co-Op
Huyssen, Andreas (1988) After the Great Divide Macmillan
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.
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) 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