‘Modernities’

31st May - 2nd June 2022

This course was designed to give students a challenging insight into the writing of the modernists, from the beginning of the early 20th century. We chose texts that are rarely covered on the curriculum, so the course will push students to read beyond their capabilities and expand their understanding, as well as developing their comprehension skills and analytical thinking.

Texts covered:

Virginia Woolf - ‘The Mark on the Wall’

In this story, a first-person narrator sits in her living room smoking a cigarette on a January day after tea and looks into the fire. She notices a mark on the wall and uses it as a distraction from her terrible thoughts of war.

Zora Neale Hurston - ‘John Redding Goes to Sea’

In this story, young John Redding wants to leave his hometown to see and explore parts and things unknown; he desires freedom. Several circumstances conspire, however, to keep him from realizing his dream.

T. S. Eliot - ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’

A dramatic monologue, which the speaker narrates the anxieties and preoccupations of his inner life as a modern man.

‘Curiosities’

14th - 17th February 2022

This course introduced students to six challenging texts across the genres of dystopia, Gothic, absurd and nonsense writing.

See below for example slides and resources.

Texts covered:

Nikolai Gogol, ‘The Nose’ – a bizarre story in which a prominent general awakes to find out that his nose has vanished from his face, and is living a life of its own

Lewis Carroll, ‘Jabberwocky’ – a nonsense poem telling the story of a horrifying monster and its defeat

Roald Dahl, ‘The Way Up to Heaven’ – a funny quirky story in which a woman suffers from a debilitating fear of being late

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘The Lady of Shallot’ – a ballad poem telling a tragic tale of a woman cursed to remain stranded in a tower

Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – a Gothic tale about Ichabod Crane, an ill-fated schoolmaster with a fascination with the supernatural

Ray Bradbury, ‘A Sound of Thunder’ – a short dystopian story in which humans go back in time to the Jurassic period in order to hunt dinosaurs

Kate Wilhelm, ‘The Funeral’ – a short dystopian story set in a regimented world in which individuals’ lives and social positions are controlled