Modern and Contemporary Literature

What does it mean to be modern? Where does literary modernism begin and end? This English and Theatre Studies subject explores the endurance and plurality of modern writing across 20th and 21st century literary landscapes in Britain, Ireland, North America and Australia. By introducing and applying an intertextual lens, we will discover genealogical connexions between contemporary, popular texts and their influences. In doing so, we will consider vital moments of innovation, adoption and rupture in works by key modernist authors and their inheritors. Across three genre-based modules (Modernist Fictions; Verse and Performance; Non-fiction Prose and Literary Magazines), you will encounter works by canon modernists, mid-century essayists, and contemporary authors. These writers variously tease out and reorganise categories to do with perspective (e.g. marginal and primary), space (e.g. cities and rooms), and form (e.g. fiction and non-fiction, prose and verse). With peers, and in assessments, you will engage closely and critically with set texts to situate them in relation to their cultural, political and historical contexts. You will gain an understanding of modern writing as a continually vital, experimental mode of social and political response. You will also be introduced to key developments in literary criticism and critical theory.