Module Identifier ENM4120  
Module Title METAFICTIONAL EXPERIMENTS IN THE POSTMODERN NOVEL  
Academic Year 2007/2008  
Co-ordinator Dr William G Slocombe  
Semester Intended for use in future years  
Next year offered N/A  
Next semester offered N/A  
Other staff Professor Timothy S Woods  
Course delivery Seminars / Tutorials   Seminar. 2 hours per week  
Assessment
Assessment TypeAssessment Length/DetailsProportion
Semester Assessment Essay: 1 x 5,000 word essay100%
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.100%

Learning outcomes

On completion of this module, students should be able to:

1. demonstrate a knowledge of the issues associated with postmodernism in relation to contemporary British literature;

2. demonstrate an ability to employ this specialist knowledge in an extended critical and analytical essay;

3. demonstrate an ability to perform comparative critical analysis at an advanced level of research.

Aims

Brief description

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.

Content

SEMINAR PROGRAMME

Seminar 1: Fiction and Postmodernity

Seminar 2: The Construction of Postmodern Spaces

Seminar 3: Postmodernist Histories
    

Seminar 4: Rewriting Fictions

Seminar 5: Race and Postermodernism

Reading Lists

Books
** Should Be Purchased
Auster, Paul (1987.) The New York Trilogy Faber 0571152236
Auster, Paul (2006.) Travels in the Scriptorium Faber 0571232558
Barnes, Julian (1990) A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters Picador 0330313991
Carter, Angela (1982) The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman Penguin 0140056513
Carter, Angela (1982) The Passion of New Eve Virago 0860683419
Rushdie, Salman (1988) The Satanic Verses Viking 0670825379
Swift, Graham (1992) Waterland Picador 0330323504
** Recommended Text
Currie, Mark, ed. (1995) Metafiction Longman 058221291X
Hutcheon, Linda (1989) The Politics of Postmodernism Routledge 0415039924
Waugh, Patricia (1988) Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction Routledge 0416326404
** Supplementary Text
Barthelme, Donald (1968) Snow White Bantam Books
Carter, Angela (1981) The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories Penguin 0140128379
Danielewski, Mark Z. (2000) House of Leaves Anchor 1862301107
Fowles, John (1987) The French Lieutenant's Woman Pan 0330298119
Morrison, Toni (1992) Jazz Chatto & Windus 0701134496
** Recommended Background
Christensen, Inger (1981) The Meaning of Metafiction: A Critical Study of Selected Novels by Sterne, Nabokov, Barth and Beckett Universitets forlaget 8200056929
Hutcheon, Linda (1984) Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox Methuen 041637140X
Scholes, Robert (1979) Fabulation and Metafiction University of Illinois Press 0252007042

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 7