Contemporary English Literature
Code
711121027
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Línguas, Culturas e Literaturas Modernas, Secção de Estudos Ingleses e Norte-Americanos
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
Carlos Ceia
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) To become more knowledge-based and more learned in Contemporary English Literature, from modernism until today;
b) To learn how to contextualize the authors and to review the limits of literary history;
c) To read critically key texts of poetry (Seamus Heaney and poets of today), theatre (Samuel Beckett, John Osborne and Tom Stoppard) and fiction (Kingsley Amis and John Berger, about the English novel on Portugal; James Joyce and Peter Ackroyd about the coming-of-age novel; Alan Bennett and Virginia Woolf on the theory of literary reading; A. S. Byatt and David Lodge on the academic novel);
d) To learn how to do relevant research in the field of Literary Studies;
e) To organize bibliographic research as a preparation for critical reading of a literary work;
f) To produce a short research paper on one of the works studied in class.
Prerequisites
Absent .
Subject matter
- British poetry of today: contexts, themes, authors, with particular reference to Seamus Heaney; the reterritorialization of the English language contemporary poetry.
-Samuel Beckett and the theatre of the absurd: Waiting for Godot;
- John Osborne: Look Back in Anger
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.
- Portugal as an exotic scenario in English fiction: I Like it Here, by Kingsley Amis and Here Is Where We Meet, by John Berger.
-Possible directions for the contemporary British novel: Fiction before and after World War II: boundaries of modernism and post-modernism
-Comparative reading: The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene and The End of the Affair, movie by Neil Jordan
- The coming-of-age novel: The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, and English Music, by Peter Ackroyd;
- The tradition of the academic British novel: David Lodge: Changing Places; A. S. Byatt: Possession.
Bibliography
- Eagleton, T. (2005). The English Novel. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Esslin, M. [1961] (1991). The Theatre of the Absurd, London: Penguin.
- Hampson, R. & Barry, P. (eds.) (1993). New British Poetries: The Scope of the Possible, New York and Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Head, D. (2002). The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Paterson, D. & Simic, C. (eds.) (2004). New British Poetry, Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press.
Teaching method
- Presentation of the various topics by the lecturer; reading and discussion of a selection of texts covering the topics outlined in the syllabus;
- Tutorial supervision of the research work related to the final paper chosen by the student.
Evaluation method
Evaluation: Presentation of a research paper.