Module Information
Course Delivery
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
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Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module students should be able to:
Brief description
This module studies postmodernism in terms of its literary genres, and the theories that go into their construction. Bridging between poetry, prose, and critical works, we will study the ways in which postmodern authors use different rhetorical and structural tactics to experiment with forms and genres. Offering a broad chronological sweep of postmodern literature, from the 1970s to the present day, and studying both its British and American incarnations, we will examine the ways in which postmodern literature developed over time, alongside its central conceptual concerns with space, alterity, histories, and bodies.
Content
This session introduces the concept of a ¿postmodern¿ writing in relation to both poetry and prose. We will discuss essays by Charles Olson and Frank O¿Hara in the first half of the session, and then move on to study extracts from John Barth¿s Lost in the Funhouse and his seminal essay ¿The Literature of Exhaustion.¿
Week Two: Gender & Genre
Text: Joanna Russ, The Female Man (1975)
Week Three:
Text: Charles Bernstein, All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems
Week Four: History & Memory
Text: Iain Banks, The Bridge (1986)
Week Five:
Text: Lyn Hejinian, My Life
Week Six: Language & Performance
Text: Christine Brooke-Rose, Textermination (1992)
Week Seven:
Text: Denise Riley, Selected Poems
Week Eight: Space & Media
Text: Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (2000)
Week Nine:
Text: Barry McSweeney, Wolf Tongue: Poems 1975 - 2000
Week Ten: Postmodern Conclusions
This session explores the chronological development of postmodernism from its earliest incarnations in formal literary experimentation to its currently proposed ¿demise.¿ We will study essays by Nicholas Zurbrugg, Stuart Sim, and Timothy Murphy in order to discuss ¿what comes after postmodernism?¿
Aims
This module tracks the development of postmodernism in both poetry and prose, and provides students with a conceptual frame through which to understand postmodern literature. It explores postmodern literature through the close study of selected texts and critical essays, and thereby links together the difficult theoretical and conceptual concerns of postmodernism with actual literary production.
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 7