2019/20 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

ENGL3321 Angry Young Men and Women: Literature of the Mid-Twentieth Century

20 creditsClass Size: 30

School of English

Module manager: Dr Tracy Hargreaves
Email: t.hargreaves@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2019/20

This module is not approved as a discovery module

Module summary

The post-war years witnessed profound changes in Britain‘s cultural landscape, from the foundation of the cradle-to-the-grave‘ Welfare State, the emergence of a consumer culture that helped create youth culture and the teenager‘, the angry young man‘, kitchen sink drama‘ and a new preoccupation with sexuality and sexual politics. This module engages with literature of the mid-century period and with the diverse ways in which a new generation of writers came to represent, reflect and to influence cultural change between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, from George Orwell‘s concerns about the effect of totalitarian and mass culture on individual liberty to the iconic critiques of cultural complacency in the works of Amis and Osborne, and the lyrical account of conflicted responses to politics, marriage and children in the writing of Doris Lessing and Sylvia Plath. The module engages with the diversity of literary and theatrical responses in post-war culture and to that end, topics for discussion are likely to include working class identities, youth culture, popular and mass culture, intimacy, alienation, social (or neo-) realism, and the early stirrings of feminism’s second wave. There will also be opportunity to watch screenings of adaptations from the ‘New Wave’ of 1960s British cinema.

Objectives

- To gain a critical and contextual (historical, political, cultural) understanding of a range of mid-century texts (including fiction, poetry, drama and film).
- To gain an understanding of the development of and experiments in literary form, and
- To explore the relationship of writers and their work to their social environment.

Learning outcomes
Students will have developed:
- the ability to use written and oral communication effectively;
- the capacity to analyse and critically examine diverse forms of discourse;
- the ability to manage quantities of complex information in a structured and systematic way;
- the capacity for independent thought and judgement;
- critical reasoning;
- research skills, including the retrieval of information, the organisation of material and the evaluation of its importance;
- IT skills;
- efficient time management and organisation skills;
- the ability to learn independently.

Skills outcomes
- Skills for effective communication, oral and written.
- Capacity to analyse and critically examine diverse forms of discourse.
- Ability to acquire quantities of complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way.
- Capacity for independent thought and judgement.
- Critical reasoning.
- Research skills, including information retrieval skills, the organisation of material, and the evaluation of its importance.
- IT skills.
- Time management and organisational skills.
- Independent learning.

Syllabus

This module engages with literature of the mid-twentieth century and engages with diverse ways in which an identifiably new generation of writers came to represent, reflect and to influence cultural change between the late 1940s to the late 1960s.

Topics for discussion will include representations of the family and state, the working-class, youth, memory, nostalgia, novelty, alienation and literary form and the use of language.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lectures	5	1.00	5.00
Seminar	10	1.00	10.00
Private study hours			185.00
Total Contact hours			15.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Private study

Reading, seminar preparation and essay writing.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

- Contribution to seminars
- 1 x 1,700 word unassessed essay.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	4,500 words	100.00
Essay	An essay plan of 500-700 words is required and this will be returned individually. This does not form part of the assessment for this module, but is a requirement and MUST be submitted. Students who fail to submit the unassessed essay will be awarded a maximum mark of 40 for the module (a bare Pass)	0.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

An essay plan of 500-700 words is required and this will be returned individually. This does not form part of the assessment for this module, but is a requirement and MUST be submitted. Students who fail to submit the unassessed essay will be awarded a maximum mark of 40 for the module (a bare Pass)

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 30/04/2019

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