Module: ENG6101-20 Modernist Networks

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Elizabeth Wright

Module Tutor Contact Details: e.wright@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

From the early decades of the twentieth century, the phenomenon we call ‘Modernism’ swept through all disciplines and across every continent. It responded to, but also shaped, the condition of modernity, as it was understood and expressed by a diverse body of authors, artists, dramatists, choreographers and theatre practitioners. Modernist texts demanded the full engagement of their audience, they broke taboos, mocked conventions, and revelled in all that was new. But they also renewed traditions and sought to establish their own order. Modernism transformed the aesthetic scene, but it has also presented scholars with an enduring challenge -- how to understand and analyse this most mercurial of movements. The module addresses this challenge using modernism’s investment in networks (personal, professional, generic, international and intertextual) to explore the relationships between topics, authors, and their works.

2. Outline syllabus:

After an introductory session which will map out the key figures, movements and texts that shaped European Modernism, the module will be split into three main strands:

1. Modernist Theatre Networks – This section of the module aims to introduce you to the network of dramatists and theatre theorists who tried to revolutionise theatre in this period. Connected by their shared desire to innovate and experiment writers such as Chekhov, Strindberg, Pirandello, Brecht and Artaud rescued the stage from the clutches of melodrama and the pièce bien faite. The international nature of their collaborations enabled them to make huge leaps in both the writing of drama and the performance techniques and designs used to produce it. This section examines the connections between two of the playwrights and theatre theorists of the time listed above.

2. Modernist Networks: gender, performance, short fiction – This section of the module will explore the development of a key modernist genre: short fiction. Its focus is on the work of female authors whose work intersects with the material covered in the first section, reflecting in particular on questions of gender as performance. It will also look forward to the third section, selecting texts that reflect the decentering of national and linguistic identity, and on the politics of space and consumption in the urban metropolis.

3. Trans-European Modernism: travel, translation, traces – This section of the module picks up and continues the previous focus on short fiction by tracing the inter-cultural influences within continental European literature, art and thought as it encounters new forms of technologies of transportation and communication. These translations and ‘border-crossing’ are integral to Modernism at a number of levels, particularly in the slippage between different modes of literary language and the mutual borrowings between literature, visual art and music.

3. Teaching and learning activities:

1. Seminar discussions and small group work

2. Lectures

3. Presentations

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Digital Project (5000 words equivalent)

• % Weighting: 100