Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

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.

Estimated Student Workload
Contact time: 20 hours
Reading and preparation: 100 hours
Independent study preparing assignments 77.5 hrs

Week One: Postmodern Writing
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:
Text: John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969)

Week Three:
Text: Sequences from Charles Bernstein, All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems (2011)

Week Four:
Text: Joanna Russ, The Female Man (1975)

Week Five:
Text: Lyn Hejinian, My Life and My Life in the Nineties (2013)

Week Six: Oral Presentations (on 1 prose and 1 poetic text)

Week Seven:
Text: Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984)

Week Eight:
Text: Denise Riley, Selected Poems (2000)

Week Nine:
Text: Iain Banks, The Bridge (1986)

Week Ten:
Text: the Pearl sequence, from Barry McSweeney, Wolf Tongue: Poems 1975 – 2000 (2003)