Unit rationale, description and aim
This unit covers major literary works from the late eighteenth century to the present, organised through four literary periods and movements: Romanticism, the nineteenth century, modernism and postmodernism. Students engage deeply with individual works while attending to aesthetic breaks and continuities across the unit’s chronological span. Particular attention is given to the different valuations and practices of realism and of innovation within and between periods.
The unit aims to trace the characteristic features and historical development of literature across these four periods and movements through close analysis of representative texts. Students will develop their capacity to analyse and critique diverse works within the western literary tradition and to understand the complex lineage of aspects of contemporary literature and culture.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Identify key aspects of great Romantic, nineteenth...
Learning Outcome 01
Analyse literary, social, historical, aesthetic or...
Learning Outcome 02
Evaluate knowledge from diverse sources and commun...
Learning Outcome 03
Compose intellectually-grounded and informed judgm...
Learning Outcome 04
Content
Topics may include:
- Comparative Romanticisms: German, English, French, etc.
- Global literary responses to the French Revolution
- The ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads and the genre of poetic manifestos
- The dialectic of ‘imagination’ and ‘realism’ in the nineteenth-century novel (e.g. Madame Bovary, Hard Times, Middlemarch)
- The interplay of social criticism and psychological drama in Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw
- World War I and its impact on modern poetry, fiction, and film
- Modernist ‘epics’ (Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, In Search of Lost Time) and modernist ‘fragments’ (The Waste Land, Kafka)
- Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, women’s modernisms, and the construction of women’s literary history
- Race in American modernism and postmodernism (e.g. Faulkner, Hurston, Ellison, Hughes, Morrison, Roth)
- Postmodernist fictions (e.g. Ficciones, The Crying of Lot 49, Infinite Jest, White Teeth)
- Parody and play in relation to the literary past (e.g. Top Girls, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead)
Assessment strategy and rationale
A range of assessment procedures will be used to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with the University's assessment requirements. Assessments have been developed to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with the University's assessment requirements. These have been designed so that they use a variety of tasks to measure the different learning outcomes at a level suitable for third-year studies of Western Civilisation. The research project has two stages that require students to propose and complete a study of one Romantic or nineteenth-century work, analysing its literary form and techniques. The study will address the work within its cultural and historical context and in light of contemporary scholarship.
The exam is summative and requires students to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of literary works and styles over the periods in question, with a substantial focus on modernism and postmodernism. This in-class, secure assessment will comprise shorter questions covering course content and concepts, and essay prompts inviting analyses of texts in terms of overlaps and interactions among literary periods and movements.
Overview of assessments
Assessment 1: Part A- Research Proposal This pro...
Assessment 1: Part A- Research Proposal
This proposal requires students to outline the argument and sources to be used in the research project.
10%
Assessment 1: Part B- Research Project This essa...
Assessment 1: Part B- Research Project
This essay requires students to interpret a Romantic or nineteenth-century literary work or works, relating them to relevant contexts.
40%
Assessment 2: Exam This assessment requires stud...
Assessment 2: Exam
This assessment requires students to analyse texts and to be able to analyse how features of Romantic, nineteenth-century, modernist and postmodernist literature overlap in particular texts or cultural moments.
50%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
Students will gain familiarity with literary movements through class discussion in a small group setting, in which the texts and thematic concerns of the unit can be considered and debated in a supportive and inclusive manner. The small group setting will facilitate the use of the ‘Socratic’ method, in which analytical discussion and dialogue are stimulated through an engaging question-and-answer format to consider texts and ideas from the Romantic, nineteenth-century, modernist and postmodernist periods.
In this context, students will:
- Acquire knowledge of the Romantic, nineteenth-century, modernist and postmodernist periods, including social contexts, significant authors and works. Debates concerning the definitions of all four movements will be covered early and returned to throughout the unit.
- Hone close reading skills to generate deeper levels of analysis. This will involve discussions aimed at articulating complex meanings and structures and a sophisticated grasp of the relationships between texts and eras. Students gain skills in recognising the movement the text belongs to.
- Synthesise content knowledge and close reading skills to build interpretations in relation to relevant contexts. This ability to relate meaning to context will be developed through discussion of case studies.