ENGL3981: The Domestic Object in Edwardian and Modern Fiction

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• To introduce students to a range of Edwardian and later fiction and to a selection of critical interpretations of that fiction
• To show changes in the construction of domesticity in the selected texts and across the period
• To demonstrate the complex relationships between identity and domestic objects and practices in the literature of the course
• To promote an understanding of the relationships between Edwardian and modernist fiction.

• Texts by a selection of writers such as Woolf, Conan Doyle, Bennett, Wells, Galsworthy, Forster, Joyce, Rhys, Bowen, Waugh.
• Analysis and testing of Woolfs modernist interpretation of the Edwardians as basing character-identity on material domestic environment.
• A discourse of domesticity in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.
• Modernist constructions (and dismantling) of the relationship between character-identity and material domestic environment.
• Edwardian and Modernist versions of domesticity, with particular reference to gender and class, with some attention to national identity.
• Related critical and theoretical studies by e.g. Walter Benjamin, Bill Brown, Susan Stewart and David Trotter.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• At the end of the course students will have knowledge of: a range of Edwardian and modern fiction; a range of critical interpretations of that fiction; domesticity in the novel with particular reference to the period; the association of identity with the home in some fiction and in the discourse of domesticity.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students will be able to: analyse notions of domesticity in the literature of the course; show a grasp of the relationships between identity and the domestic in the literature of the course; create evidence-based arguments regarding changing approaches to narrative form; interpret possible reasons for, and implications of, the association of identity with home.

Key Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• competence in the planning and execution of assessed work
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the assessment may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as creative criticism.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessment allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second assessment.

Before the first assessed essay, students have an individual 15 minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points relevant to the essay and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

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