spring 2017
COURSE: CONTEMPORARY LITERATURES
IN ENGLISH
CODE: NMB AN113G3
ROOM: B-118
TIME: Mon 15.30-17.00
REICHMANN ANGELIKA, PhD
e-mail:
OFFICE: B-320
OFFICE HOURS: Tue 12.45-13.30
Thu 9.15-10.00
Course description
Contemporary Literatures in English is a survey course which is thematically bound to the lecture course on the same topic. As such, it aims at concretising and deepening the students’ knowledge of the literature of the period through the in-depth analysis of seminal texts in fiction, drama and poetry. To a great extent, this highly practical course relies on students’ personal reading experience and interpretation shared in classroom discussions. Apart from helping students in learning facts about English Literature it also aims at developing their language skills in the course of discussing literary texts, just as well as demonstrating and practicing research methods, analytic and argumentative skills, and actualising basic literary terminology.
Required reading
The texts to be read by each and every student for the seminars are specified in the detailed schedule below. The novels and plays are available in the Literature Library, but the number of copies is limited (6-8). Due to the size of the seminar groups students are kindly advised to buy a copy of their own. The poems are collected in a course packet, which is accessible via Internet ( password: rushdie). Students are expected to bring along a copy of the text to be discussed for each seminar.
Class requirements:
Students are expected to attend the classes. According to general college regulations, if they miss out more than one consultation, they cannot be given a grade at the end of the term.
Students are expected to keep up with the readings and participate actively in classroom discussion. Classroom participation will be a crucial part of their final grade.
Students are required to look up the unfamiliar words in the poems for the seminars.
Students have to write a plot test on every work of fiction and drama at the beginning of the consultations.
Students have to submit a take-home essay.
-The take-home essay must be submittedby the essay deadline. Any delay may result in the reduction of the grade given. The essay should be about five typed pages (four to six pages, Times New Roman, font size 12, double line spacing). Students can choose from a list of topics accessible via Students are expected to produce a research paper, therefore to consult at least five recent academic sources of high standard. Each quoted scholarly article counts as a source, even if they are included e.g. in the same collection of articles. GCSE resource materials and encyclopaedia articles (paper-based or electronic), however, are not accepted as academic sources. The formal requirements of quoting and identifying secondary sources are contained in the MLA handbook, an on-line guide to which is accessible at Any student caught at intentional plagiarism will automatically fail the course without an option to improve theirmark in the same term.Students with any questions related to their essay are heartily encouraged to consult me in my office hours.
Evaluation of the course:
The achievement of each student will be evaluated by one final grade only, which will include the following constituents:
Attendance andclassroom discussion / 20
Plot tests / 30
Take-home essay / 50
Total
/ 10090-100 / 5
75-89 / 4
62-74 / 3
51-61 / 2
1-50 / 1
Schedule:
Section I – British Literature and Anglophone Literatures outside the US
Week 1 (6 February): The Neo-Romantic Legacy and the Movement – Poetry in the 1950s and 1960s
Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill” (together with Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”), “Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night”
Philip Larkin, “Church Going,” “Annus Mirabilis,” “Aubade”
Ted Hughes, “Crow's First Lesson,” “The Child Is Father To The Man,” “Hawk Roosting,” “The Thought-Fox,” “The Minotaur”
Week 2 (13 February): Revolutions on Stage I: The Angry Young Men
John Osborne, Look back in Anger
Week 3 (20 February): Revolutions on Stage II: The Theatre of the Absurd
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Week 4 (27 February): Early Postmodernism and Historiographic Metafiction
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Week 5 (6 March): From the Periphery to the Centre: Ethnic Voices in the Literatures of the UK
Seamus Heaney, “Digging”, “Personal Helicon”, “Bogland”, “The Tollund Man”, “From the Frontier of Writing”
Raymond Williams, People of the Black Mountains, vol. 2, The Eggs of the Eagle (selected short stories)
Carol Ann Duffy, „Whoever She Was,” „Education for Leisure,” „Standing Female Nude”
Week 6 (13 March): New Internationalism, Postcolonial Literatures and Magical Realism
Salman Rushdie, Shame
Week 7 (20 March): Anglophone Literatures outside the UK and the US
J. M. Coetzee, Foe
Section II – American Literature
András Tarnóc PhD
Room: B-215
Office hours:
Tuesday: 12.00-13.00
Thursday: 10.45-11.45
Week 8 (27 March) Post-war anxieties in fiction and drama: Saul Bellow:”Looking for Mr. Green” Arthur Miller: “Death of a Salesman”
Week 9 (3 April) Non-conformist fiction: J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye
Week 10 (10 April) Post-war poetry: Allen Ginsberg:”Howl” Sylvia Plath: ”Daddy”
Week 12 (24 April) Postmodern fiction:Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (excerpt)
Week 14 (8 May) Black and ethnic cultural revival: Alice Walker: ”Everyday Use”
Week 15(15 May)Minimalist literature: Raymond Carver: ”A Small Good Thing”
Text: Baym, Nina et al. The Norton Anthology of American Literature New York: Norton, 1989.
Grading: written test on May 15
Week 12 (24 April): Essay Deadline for Angelika Reichmann – Submit a hard copy, please, either personally or by post.
Week 15 (16 and 18 May): Evaluation – Essays for Angelika Reichmann and tests can be collected in my office hours.