Optional Honours Modules: Levels 3000 and 4000
Performing Early-Modern Sexualities
Early-modern perceptions of gender and sexuality were based less on a series of binary opposites (man/woman, male/female, masculine/feminine) than on a fluid continuum that allowed for all sorts of interesting permutations and possibilities. The literature of the period demonstrates a particular interest in the performative nature of sexuality and gender, featuring male and female cross-dressers, bisexual clergymen, individuals of indeterminate sex and so on. Texts encompassing a variety of cultures and genres by male and female authors will be studied; these may include Veronica Franco'sTerze rime, Catalina Erauso's The Lieutenant Nun, The Memoires of the Abbe de Choisy, and John Lyly's Gallathea.
Poetry and Prose in Conflict
This module raises questions on one of the most disturbing and traumatic human, social and historical phenomena: that of conflict. Conflict can be explored speculatively both across time and also vis-a-vis modern contemporary reality and writing. Prose and poetry written around and about twentieth-century conflict will be compared in this module, taught by members of the School of English and the French, Italian, Russian, and Arabic departments. Texts typically will include: Henri Barbusse, Under Fire (1916); Ernst Juenger,Storms of Steel (1920); F.T. Marinetti, Zang Tumb Tumb(1914); Giuseppe Ungaretti, The Buried Port (1916 and 1923); Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day; Alexander Baron's From the City, From the Plough (1948); Arnold Zweig, Sergeant Grischa (1927); Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard (1924); Viktor Shklovskii, A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs 1917-1922 (1923); Hanan al-Shaykh, Beirut Blues(1992); Elias Khoury, The Journey of Little Gandhi (1989).
Slavery and Atlantic Literature
This module will trace the stories and trajectories shaped by one of the most disturbing institutions in the history of the modern world: slavery. Slavery linked together the edges of the Atlantic space, thus creating a new, global geography which we will explore from different perspectives by studying a broad range of mostly literary testimonies. Texts typically include: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789); C.E. Boniface, Account of the shipwreck of the French vessel the Eole on the coast of Kaffreria in April 1829; Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Sab (1841); Toni Morrison, Beloved(1987); Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco (1992); and Gisèle Pineau, Devil's Dance (2002).
Philosophy and Literature
This module explores the interplay between philosophy and literature that, at least in the Western tradition, reaches all the way back to Plato. Can literature effectively express philosophical ideas? Can philosophy be enriched by literary techniques? These are some of the questions addressed in this module, which seeks to deepen our understanding of the function and limits of both disciplines. Texts typically will include: Voltaire, Zadig (1747); Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1836); Søren Kierkegaard, Diary of a Seducer (1843); Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85); Andryi Belyi, The Silver Dove (1910); Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927); Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea (1978).
Prize-Winning Novelists
This module involves critical readings of works by contemporary novelists whose exceptional talent has been recognised by the award of major international literary prizes, such as the Nobel Prize for Literature. The overarching aim is to define the distinctiveness of each writer’s voice while identifying the features they share. Texts will typically include novels by Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Elias Canetti, Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Johannes V. Jensen.