Syllabus
1. ACHETYPAL STORY REFASHIONING
Andrew Lang: The Blue Fairy Book: “Beauty and the Beast” (1889) + Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories: “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” (1979)
FOCUS: fairy tale, postmodernist refashioning of archetypal story 2. POSTCOLONIAL DEFAMILIARISATION
Nadine Gordimer: “Once Upon a Time” (1989) + “The Ultimate Safari” (1989) from Jump and Other Stories (1991)
FOCUS: Postcolonial literature, irony, defamiliarisation 3. HISTORY AND HIS STORY
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “A Private Experience” (2008) + “The Headstrong Historian” (2008)
FOCUS: HISTORY vs. HIS STORY 4. TRADITION VS. MODERNITY
Anita Desai: “Studies in the Park” (1978) + Witi Ihimaera: “The Whale” (1972)
Focus: tradition and modernity 5. ROMANCE ALTERATION
Tennessee Williams: “The Field of Blue Children” (1937) + Kurt Vonnegut: “Runaways” (1961)
Focus: Romance as generic writing formula (cliché) 6. AMBIGUOUS NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Ambrose Bierce: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890)
Focus: ambiguous narrative perspective 7. LITERARY MINIMALISM
Ernest Hemingway: “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927) + Henry Lawson: “The Drover’s Wife” (1896)
Focus: literary minimalism 8. THE CONCRETE CHARACTER OF POETIC LANGUAGE
Sylvia Plath, Elisabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin: selected poems
Focus: the concrete character of poetic language 9. COMPLEX SIMPLICITY ee cummings, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost: selected poems
Focus: complex simplicity 10. SPACE AND IDENTITY
Doris Lessing: “To Room Nineteen” (1963) and Fay Weldon: “Weekend” (1978, 2009)
Focus: space and identity
Annotation
This is a one-term course focused on close reading of predominantly contemporary literature written in English. The seminar texts are selected with regard to their content, format and the language in which they are written, so that they are properly suited for in-class close reading. The texts are analysed both through the prism of traditional and modern critical methodology, fermented by what has become known as RWCT
(Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking) methodology. The main aims of the course are the development of critical thinking and language mastery as well as anchoring of the findings into the wider context of contemporary sociocultural situation.