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A comparative study of eight novels in English that reflect or have helped to shape our sense of what Isaiah Berlin called "this most terrible century in Western history". The course will examine the notion that the breakdown of families, hierarchies and nineteenth century imperial certainties contributed to the proliferation of parodic, subversive, and dystopian novels as the twentieth century progressed.
In its investigation of the novels the course will also attend to the various critical contexts – modernism, Marxism, humanism, postmodernism, post-structuralism, feminism and post-colonialism – that have helped shaped the twentieth-century imagination.This course can be used towards an English major or minor. BA students who major in English would normally take at least two 100-level 15 point ENGL courses (which must include at least one of the following: ENGL117, ENGL102 or ENGL103), at least three 200-level 15 point ENGL courses, and at least two 300-level 30 point ENGL courses. Please see the BA regulations or a student advisor for more information.
In this course you will learn:an ability to consider both literary and cultural ways of reading a selection of twentieth-century fiction;familiarity with a range of major twentieth-century novels and appreciation of the conditions of each novel’s production;an understanding of the way twentieth-century historical and cultural movements have shaped literature and literary criticism;experience constructing critical arguments, with a focus on the comparative literary analysis essay
15 points of ENGL at 200-level with a B pass, or30 points of ENGL at 200-level, orany 45 points at 200-level from the Arts Schedule.
Nicholas Wright
Mandala White
Because of the substantial reading load, students are strongly advised to read as many novels as possible before classes commence. Class discussions will proceed on the assumption that all students have read the text. Text books (in order of study):• Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness (1899)• Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse (1927)• George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)• Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange (1962)• Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)• Isabel Allende. The House of Spirits (1982)• Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)• Don DeLillo. Mao II (1991) (Image: "Clockwork Orange eye scene" by Gwendal Uguen, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)
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Domestic fee $1,464.00
International fee $5,950.00
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
For further information see Humanities .