This course is designed for students who enjoy reading and discussing novels, belong to a book club or reading group, read reviews of fiction, have opinions and ideas about novels, have ever thought 'so many books, so little time', and wondered how to decide which authors to try. This couse will help if you have ever been daunted by terms such as 'modernism', 'magic realism' or 'postmodern'. It aims to take your enjoyment and appreciation of fiction to the next stage and develop your ideas into coherent, backed-up analytical arguments and to have technical terms demystified.
Listen to Dr Jennifer Dunn talking about the course:
We shall be focusing on fiction by Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Zadie Smith, but the skills participants gain during their study of those novels will enable them to explore other contemporary and earlier writing. The course introduces and explains concepts such as realism, modernism, and postmodernism in an accessible way. Students will learn to analyse the language, style and structure of the key texts, and, by comparing them to extracts from eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, to understand their contexts. This course will ask you to consider the way we read and value contemporary writing, and will encourage you to discuss the approaches and assumptions in book reviews and literary prizes. Above all, this course aims to enhance your enjoyment and understanding of literature, and enable you to further explore contemporary writing.
For information on how the courses work, please click here.