Introductory description

This module will examine the phenomenon of literary and artistic avant-gardism in the twentieth century, as part of an attempt to consider artistic intervention within broader contexts of social and political action. While deliberate avant-gardism in the twentieth century is far too wide-ranging and disparate to be adequately covered in a single module, we shall organize our module by way focussing on strategies of contestation of the following forms of hegemony: 1) the global political-economic-cultural-linguistic hegemony of Europe and the US. Here, we shall examine the negotiation of “Eurocentric” modes and values in texts from Japan and Latin America. 2) Hegemony of social class, region, and ethnicity within the European-Anglo-American cultural space. In this context, we will examine forms of “provincial” modernism (MacDiarmid and Joyce) as well as African diasporic writing 3) The political hegemony of bourgeois, liberal democracy. Here, we shall examine avant-gardes with an explicitly and unequivocally revolutionary agenda (Futurism, Eisenstein, Brecht, Situationism). 4) Bourgeois social and sexual hegemony, as thrown into question by queer writing, as well as by elements of Surrealism. 5) Formal hegemony, in its role as conduit and enforcer of the market-place and culture industry as arbiters of value. Here, the clear political valency will be restored to modernist formal departures which are too often and easily seen as “clever innovations” or “technical advances,” rather than clear reformulations of the aesthetic, and its place within the social.
(This module ran for a number of years in the early 2010s - it is being re-proposed only because of a change in module management system)

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Indicative Syllabus (subject to change in accordance with developments in the field)
W1: Introduction

W2: Background I: selections from Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto; Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals; Freud.

W3: Background II:– Leon Trotsky, ‘Literature and Revolution’; Wyndham Lewis, ‘Vorticism’; Marinetti, ‘The Founding and Manifesto of Modernism’; Tristran Tzara, ‘Dada Manifesto’

W4: Hugh MacDiarmid, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle

W5: Bertholt Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Brecht on Theatre

W7: Sergei Eisenstein, (dir.) The Battleship Potemkin and Film Form

W8: Aimé Césaire, ‘Racial Consciousness and Social Revolution’

W9: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, In’ei Raisan/ In Praise of Shadows

W10: Marguerite Duras/ Alain Resnais, Hiroshima Mon Amour

W11: James Joyce, Dubliners

W12: Gertrude Stein, ‘Susie Asado’, ‘Tender Buttons’, ‘What are masterpieces and why are there so few of them?’

W13: Ezra Pound, ‘Murder by Capital’, ‘In the Station of the Metro’, selection from the Cantos

W14: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

W15: Pablo Neruda, Selected Poems

W17: Mishima Yukio, Forbidden Colours

W18: Selection from ed. Tom McDonough, Guy Debord and the Situationist International

W19: Denise Riley, Selected Poems

W20: Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Effectively transmit core information, arguments and analysis in a variety of forms.
• Discuss theories of modernism, distilling key ideas in oral and written form.
• Demonstrate a broad understanding of the concepts, information, practical competencies and techniques which are standard features in the study of twentieth-century culture
• Apply generic and subject specific analytical skills to close textual reading.
• Appreciate and employ the historical contours of modernist studies, and critically evaluate the appropriateness of different methods of enquiry.
• Be able to situate literary texts, films, and other media in relation to a range of political, social, and artistic contexts.

Indicative reading list

Primary:
Ed. Vassiliki Kolocotroni, et al. Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents (Edinburgh UP, 1998)
James Joyce, Dubliners (Penguin Modern Classics, 2000)
Gertude Stein, Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, (Vintage, 1990)
Ezra Pound, New Selected Poems and Translations, Richard Sieburth, editor (New Directions, 2010)
Hugh MacDiarmid, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (Polygon, 2008)
Bertolt Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Penguin Modern Classics, 2007)
Abdelwahab Meddeb, Talismano (Dalkey Archive, 2011)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Virago Press, 2008)
Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives (Picador Press, 2009 or 2012)
Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (Bloodaxe, 1995)
Mishima Yukio, Forbidden Colours (Penguin Modern Classics, 2008)
Marguerite Duras (Richard Seaver, trans), Hiroshima Mon Amour (Grove Press, 1961).
Pablo Neruda, Selected Poems (Andrew Kerrigan,ed and trans) (Penguin Books, 1992).
Denise Riley, Selected Poems (Picador, 2019)

Secondary:
Peter Burger. Theory of the Avant-Garde (University of Minnesota Press, 1984)
Erin Carlston. Thinking Fascism: Sapphic Modernism and Fascist Modernity (Stanford UP, 1998)
Robert Crawford. Devolving English Literature (Edinburgh UP, 2000)
Wai Chee Dimock. Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time (Princeton UP, 2006)
Laura Doyle and Laura Winkiel, eds. Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (Indiana UP, 2005)
Henry Louis Gates. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (Oxford UP, 1988)
Andrew Hewitt. Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Avant-Garde (Stanford UP, 1996)
Rosalind Krauss. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (MIT Press, 1986)
Tom McDonough, ed. Guy Debord and the Situationist International (MIT Press, 2004)
Yunte Huang. Transpacific Displacement: Ethnography, Translation, and Intertextual Travel in Twentieth-Century American Literature (University of California Press, 2002)
David Lloyd. Anomalous States: Irish Writing and the Post-Colonial Moment (Duke UP, 1993)
Michael North. Reading 1922: A Return to the Scene of the Modern (Oxford UP, 2002)
Marjorie Perloff. The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture (University of Chicago, 2004)
Martin Puchner. Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Garde (Princeton UP, 2005)
Jean-Michel Rabaté. 1913: The Cradle of Modernism (Blackwell, 2007)
Sophie Seita. Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine Communities from Dada to Digital (Stanford UP, 2019)
Steven Yao. Translation and the Languages of Modernism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
Jeffrey Schnapp and Matthew Tiews, eds. Crowds (Stanford UP, 2006)

Research element

Students will need to write two research-driven essays, one of 3,000 words, and another of 4,000.

Subject specific skills

Consider and analyse literary texts, films, and aesthetic theory from major artists and thinkers of the 20th century. This module is comparatist in structure, and thus bolsters the skills necessary for a degree in English and Comparative Literary Studies. It also provides a wide over-view of major artistic practices in the debate in the 20th century, and thus provides considerable competence in the historical period of the 20th century.

Transferable skills

Presentation skills; literacy and cogency of written argument; ability to tackle theoretical questions surrounding comparative literature and world literature. Provides knowledge of many of the most successful and innovative artistic practices of the century, which will be of obvious utility to anyone in publishing, the creative industries (including film) or seeking to marketise the intimacy of their own personal experience in a profit-driven commodity form.