Undergraduate Course: Modernism: Text, Image, Object (ENLI10344)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course explores major works of Anglo-American literary modernism in relation to the advanced visual art of the period (including painting, collage, sculpture, photography, and installation). By approaching modernist novels and poems in this way, the course aims to: clarify students¿ understanding of the ways in which such texts challenge nineteenth-century conventions of meaning and representation; highlight the close connections that existed between literature and the visual arts, and between Britain, the United States, and continental Europe, during the modernist period; foreground the visual impact of typographic design in key modernist texts and the conjunction of text and image in celebrated modernist artworks; think through the idea of the ¿avant-garde¿ and examine the distinctive features of the major avant-garde movements; and draw attention to the importance of the manifesto as a key point of contact between modernist literature and art, and an important genre in its own right. Each week, we will examine a particular modernist cultural movement via selected writings and artworks, with the emphasis on making comparisons with artistic forms in order to deepen our understanding of literary style, technique, and theme. In addition, we will take advantage of our location and make a class visit to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which has exceptionally strong holdings of Dada and Surrealist art, as well as work by Picasso, Braque, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Paolozzi. |
| Course description |
1. Introduction to the course
2. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
Writing: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927) and extract from ¿Modern Fiction¿ (1919); Joseph Conrad, preface to The Nigger of the ¿Narcissus¿ (1897)
Art: Claude Monet, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Vincent Van Gogh, Roger Fry
3. Cubism
Writing: Gertrude Stein, Three Lives (1909); Guillaime Appollinaire, from The Cubist Painters (1913)
Art: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris
4. Futurism and Dada
Writing: Mina Loy, selections from The Lost Lunar Baedeker (1997); F.T. Marinetti, ¿The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism¿ (1909); Tristan Tzara, from ¿Dada Manifesto¿ (1918)
Art: Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch
5. Imagism and Vorticism
Writing: Selections from Imagist Poetry (2001) (including Richard Aldington, H.D., Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound); preface to Some Imagist Poets (1915); extract from Blast (1914)
Art: Wyndham Lewis, Jacob Epstein, Helen Saunders, C.R.W. Nevinson, Dorothy Shakespear
6. Surrealism
Writing: Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1936); André Breton, from ¿The First Manifesto of Surrealism¿ (1924)
Art: Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, Man Ray, Hans Bellmer
7. Precisionism, the Stieglitz Circle, and transition
Writing: Hart Crane, The Bridge (1930); Eugene Jolas, ¿Suggestions for a New Magic¿ (1927) and ¿Proclamation¿ (1929)
Art: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O¿Keefe, Charles Demuth, Joseph Stella, Edward Hopper
8. The Harlem Renaissance
Writing: Langston Hughes, selected poems; Alain Locke, from introduction to The New Negro (1925)
Art: Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, William H. Johnson, Beauford Delaney
9. Abstract Expressionism and the New York School
Writing: Selections from The New York Poets: An Anthology (2004) (including John Ashbery, Frank O¿Hara, Kenneth Koch, James Shuyler); James Shuyler, ¿Poet and Painter Overture¿ (1959)
Art: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Mark Rothko
10. Pop
Writing: J.G. Ballard, Crash (1973); Richard Hamilton, ¿For the Finest Art, Try Pop¿ (1961)
Art: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi
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Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2017/18, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
196 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
60 %,
Coursework
30 %,
Practical Exam
10 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One course essay of 2,500 words (30%)
One practical assessment (10%)
One 2-hour examination (60%) |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- understand the key ways in which literature interacted with the visual arts during the modernist period
-articulate the distinctive characteristics of the major modernist cultural movements
-compare and contrast the ways in which literature and visual art make meaning
-analyse the formal and thematic elements of major examples of literary modernism in relation to works of visual art
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Contacts
| Course organiser | Gregory Thomas
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Anne Mason
Tel: (0131 6)50 3618
Email: |
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