| CODE | ENG5079 | ||||||||||||
| TITLE | Writing from the Edge | ||||||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | English | ||||||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Being 'on the edge' is typically understood as meaning to be in a precarious position. It is an in-extremis state that can be exhilarating and exciting, but also frightening and harrowing. This study-unit explores literary works that 'write back' to us from the edge, recounting stories of risk, transgression, and adventure in ways not restrained by latent moral judgement, nor burdened with the expectation that literature should at some level be virtuous or 'improving'. The texts we will be looking at may 'delight' and 'move' (or even shock) the reader, but they do not 'teach' or at least they do not do so in any narrow or conventional way. On the contrary, these texts take the reader beyond the safe confines of the mainstream and, in so doing, broaden the horizon of possible experience. Lecture discussions will attempt to untangle shock value from literary value and explore the reception and enduring fascination and distaste that the texts provoke. A small selection of works from the list below will be read closely and discussed each year. Students will be invited to connect their reading of the novels, plays, and poetry to broader themes that expand our understanding of the irreverent, perhaps rebellious, nature of the literary. Discussions about the writers and cultural contexts in which they create and publish their ideas will question what may have inspiried writers to pen these works and how, once published, they take on a life of their own. Study-Unit Aims: - To show how literature disrupts the status quo and conventional thinking about social and political mores; - To allow postgraduates insight into how taboo and censorship work while exploring the implications for literature; - To help students understand the literary techniques used by writers to challenge their readers; - To equip students to analyse the cultural and historical contexts surrounding the creation and publication of transgressive, controversial and banned texts; - To accustom students to novelty, experimentation, radicalism, and anti-institutionalism in literary rhetoric and provide understanding in how they lead to feelings of terror, thrill, shock, surprise, devastation, and delight in readers. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Recognise and decode literary representations of sexuality / gender, state violence / surveillance, race / ethnicity, state religion / power, which often cause offence; - Discern and value literature's relationship with reality; - Discern which rhetorical situations/writing makes literature taboo, transgressive, or provocative; - Discuss and critically write about whether literature can be dangerous and who decides; - Finely judge whether literature reinforces or challenges change in society. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Discuss texts by entering into a dialogue with difficult topics represented in writing; - Read and synthesize complex texts academically; - Assess and critically write about the role of literature in generating social change; - Argue the dangers of censorship and book banning; - Write about the various issues which affect the critical and public response to novels. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: In each occurence of this study-unit a selection of primary texts will be drawn from the following list. Students will be expected to purchase the selected texts. Aciman, Andre, Call Me By Your Name (London: Atlantic Books, 2008) Acker, Kathy, Blood and Guts in High School (London: Penguin, 2017 [1984]) Arafat, Zaina, You Exist Too Much (London: Dialogue Books, 2021) Atwood, Margaret, Oryx and Crake (London: Bloomsbury, 2003) Ballard, J.G., Crash (London: Fourth Estate, 2014 [1973]) Banks, Ian, The Wasp Factory (London: Macmillan, 1984) Batuman, Elif, The Idiot (London: Jonathan Cape, 2017) Bulawayo, NoViolet, Glory (London: Chatto and Windus, 2022) Bukowski, Charles, Post Office (London: Virgin Books, 1992 [1971]) Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange (London: Penguin, 2000 [1962]) Burroughs, William S., Naked Lunch (London: Penguin, 2015 [1959]) Chung, Bora and Anton Hur, Cursed Bunny (Stockport: Honford Star, 2021) Clevenger, Craig, The Contortionist's Handbook (London: Harperperennial, 2006 [2004]) Collins, Suzanne, The Hunger Games (London: Scholastic, 2018 [2008]) Cooper, Dennis, The Sluts (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005 [2004]) DeLillo, Don, The Body Artist (London: Picador, 2001) Dunn, Katherine, Geek Love (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989 [1983]) Easton Ellis, Bret, American Psycho (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) Garner, Alan, Treacle Walker (London: 4th Estate, 2021) Ghosh, Amitav, The Hungry Tide (London: HarperCollins, 2005) Glass, Emma, Peach (London: Bloomsbury, 2018) Greenwell, Garth and R.O. Kwon, eds., Kink (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2021) Habib, Samra, We Have Always Been Here (New York: Riverrun, 2019) Huisman, Violaine, The Book of Mother (New York: Scribner, 2022 [2018]) Ishiguro, Kazuo, Klara and the Sun (London: Faber and Faber, 2021) Jonas, Julia May, Vladimir (London: Picador, 2022) Jong, Erica, Fear of Flying (New York: Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, 1973) Kane, Sarah, 4.48 Psychosis (London: Metheun Drama, 2008 [2000]) Karunatilaka, Shehan, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (London: Sort of Books, 2022 [2020]) Letham, Jonathan, Motherless Brooklyn (New York: Doubleday, 1999) Miller, Henry, Tropic of Cancer (Paris: Obelisk Press, 1934) Nelson, Caleb Azumah, Open Water (London: Viking Press, 2021) Oliver, Lauren, Panic (New York: Turtleback, 2014) Ozeki, Ruth, The Book of Form and Emptiness (New York: Viking, 2021) Palahniuk, Chuck, Haunted (New York: Doubleday, 2005) Ravenhill, Mark, Shopping and Fucking (London: Bloomsbury, 1996) Sam, Saba, Send me Nudes (London: Bloomsbury, 2022) Schwartz, Selby Wynn, After Sappho (Norwich: Galley Beggar, 2022) Selby Jr, Hubert, Last Exit to Brooklyn (New York: Grove Press, 1964) Smith, Ali, Companion Piece (London: Penguin, 2022) Stanley Robinson, Kim, The Ministry for the Future (London: Orbit Books, 2020) Thompson, Hunter S., Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (New York: Vintage Books, 1998 [1971]) Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse Five (New York: Delacorte, 1969) Vuong, Ocean, Time is a Mother (London: Penguin, 2022) Winterson, Jeanette, Written on the Body (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992) Wurtzel, Elizabeth, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1994) Supplementary Readings: Carroll, Jordan, Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of US Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021). Durand, Alain-Philippe and Naomi Mandel, eds., Novels of the Contemporary Extreme (London: Continuum, 2006). Mookerjee, Robin, Transgressive Fiction: The New Satiric Tradition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Prowse, Nycole, Heroin(e) Habits: Potential and Possibility in Female Drug Literature (Canterbury: Gylphi, 2018). Soloway, Jeff, ed., 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature. Third Edition (New York: Checkmark Books, 2022). Wood, James, How Fiction Works (New York: Vintage Books, 2009) |
||||||||||||
| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
|
||||||||||||
| LECTURER/S | James David Corby Giuliana Fenech |
||||||||||||
|
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
|||||||||||||