POSTCOLONIAL WRITING Ms Faith Pullin
A study of ethnicity and ethnic identity in writing from Africa, North America, India and the Caribbean. Consideration will also be given to British ethnicity in the post-war period. The course will include a discussion of crucial issues in postcolonial theory.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; No Longer At Ease
Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Why Are We So Blest?
Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn
Leslie Silko, Ceremony
Louise Erdrich, The Beet Queen, Tracks, Love Medicine; The Bingo Palace
George Lamming, In The Castle Of My Skin
Wilson Harris, Palace of the Peacock
George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin
Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy; A Small Place, The Autobiography of My Mother
R K Narayan, The Man-Eater of Malgudi, The Vendor of Sweets
Anita Desai, Fire on the Mountain
Ruth Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
Timothy Mo, Sour Sweet
POSTCOLONIAL POETRY Mr Colin Nicholson
An introduction to selected writing in English with the aim of exploring issues of race, nationality, gender and the self-identifying practices of a range of poets. Because notions of postmodernism are often linked with those of postcolonialism, this course will include consideration of theoretical issues raised by the texts studied. The emphasis throughout will be on strategies of reading.
Iain Crichton Smith, Collected Poems
Seamus Heaney, New Selected Poems: 1966-1987
Margaret Atwood, Poems: 1965-1975
Poems: 1976-1986
Derek Walcott, Collected Poems
E A Markham (ed), Hinterland; Caribbean Poetry
Adewale Maja-Pearce (ed), The Heinemann Book of African Poetry in English
POSTMODERNISM: WHO NEEDS IT? Mr Randall Stevenson
The course will examine and evaluate issues raised by recent theory and discussion of postmodernism, questioning how - and how successfully - this theory serves recent literature. Literary examples will be taken from 'postmodernist' fiction, discussion centering on the texts listed below. Several of these are substantial novels, or sets of novels, making it a heavy reading course overall, and it would be worth getting ahead with this reading before the course starts. You might either get going on the longer items (The Golden Notebook, Midnight's Children and the Beckett Trilogy all qualifying for that category) or just start reading from the top of the list: texts for weekly seminars will probably follow the order below.
Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two Birds (1939)
Samuel Beckett, The Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, 1950-1959)
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962)
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969)
John Berger, G (1972)
Alasdair Gray, Lanark (1981)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981)
Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry (1989)
Further background and theoretical reading will be suggested during the course, largely taken from Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993) and from Joseph Natel & Linda Hutcheon A Postmodern Reader (NY: Suny, 1996). Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (London: Routledge, 1987) offers a clear and particular introduction to some of the issues involved.
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