The post-1945 period is notable for the sheer volume and diversity of writing; no module can do it more than selective justice.

In the post-war period the...

The post-1945 period is notable for the sheer volume and diversity of writing; no module can do it more than selective justice.

In the post-war period the experiments of ‘modernism’ have continued, in forms sometimes dubbed ‘postmodern’, in the work of such writers as Beckett, Nabokov, and Coetzee. Yet such categories do not satisfactorily cover the work of many other writers of considerable power and scope whose writing works in different ways and addresses other concerns. The module aims to give you guidance in tracing some of the traditions taking shape or breaking down in the period. It seeks to provide you with a critical and historical understanding of the most important literary tendencies, paying some attention to the relations between literature and other cultural forms (especially cinema) in a period of immense change.

Lectures establish the main terms of analysis and provide background knowledge, while a great variety of seminars concentrate on particular writers, movements, genres, or themes.

Lectures are offered on a range of set texts in various genres, including drama and film, chosen to represent dominant strands of artistic production. There are introductory lectures on these texts and genres which cumulatively delineate crucial intellectual, historical, and artistic contexts. Other lectures cover other writers and issues essential to an understanding of the period.

Spring-term seminars cover areas of special interest. Recent topics have included: experimental fiction, questions of identity/identities in question, African writing, the cinema of troubled masculinity, race and immigration in African-American & Black British fiction, and drama.

Examination is by means of a written exam paper, or by Course Essay if preferred and if no other Course Essay is being submitted by the candidate in that year.