ENG6912 - Postmodern Fiction

Objectives:

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
Demonstrate detailed knowledge and understanding of the key characteristics of postmodern fiction, and of a specified selection of postmodern fictional texts from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Discuss and analyse postmodern fictional texts in relation to relevant intellectual and cultural contexts of the period covered, including postmodern criticism and theory.
Discuss and analyse the treatment within these texts of key postmodern themes, concepts and narrative devices.
Write critically and sensitively on topics of their choice, drawing on a wide range of reading and showing awareness of critical debate.

Content:

In this module, students will study a range of postmodern fictional texts from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They will explore the concept of postmodernism in relevant critical and theoretical texts, and apply the term to the texts studied, considering the characteristics of postmodernism in fiction, the forms of literary innovation to be found in postmodern texts, and the ways in which postmodern fiction responds to and represents historical and/or contemporary issues. Students will examine and compare a range of postmodern narrative innovations, and will focus in particular on topics such as: the ways in which postmodern texts invoke and subvert the search for meaning; indeterminacy, narrative unreliability and metafiction; postmodern forms of characterization; the ‘open text’ and the role of the reader; labyrinths, puzzles and postmodern quest narratives; historiographic metafiction.

Learning and Teaching Information:

The course will be taught in 2-hour seminars. Seminars will include tutor presentation, small-group workshop activities, informal student presentations and plenary discussion. Students will be given set reading and specific preparation tasks before each seminar and learning will be further supported by handouts in each seminar.

Seminars
Contact hours: 24
Intended group size: 25

Guided independent study
Hours: 176

Assessment: