This module introduces you to the literature of London, from the rise of Renaissance theatre culture to its fictional futures, and from explorations of its urban heart to its sprawling suburbs. You will investigate how numerous writers have depicted everyday life in the metropolis, as well as social upheaval, crime and injustice. You will consider the emergence of distinct literary cultures in the capital, the ways London's position at the centre of a global empire has shaped its literature, and how writers have in turn represented the experiences of particular groups, for example, social elites, immigrants, women, and children.
The module will also introduce you to some of the most fundamental categories of literature. The module will be organised into three strands: one on drama, one on poetry, and one on prose (fiction and non-fiction). In each strand you will identify the distinctive characteristics of particular forms and genres of literature, and of modes of writing that developed at particular historical moments. Through close study of a range of literary texts we will consider, for instance, what distinguishes tragedy, comedy and realism in drama, how poets have engaged with the sonnet form or the epic, what defines the memoir, and how to explain the differences in narrative style between realist and modernist fiction.
Our weekly interactive lectures will be complemented by study trips to locations across London, which may include a visit to the Globe Theatre, the London Museum or a walking lecture following the route taken by Mrs Dalloway in Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name.
This module will be organised into three strands:
Dramatic London: in this strand you will consider the city comedy of the Jacobean stage, the targets of restoration comedy's social satire, the challenges of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century realist drama, and how the radical interventions of contemporary playwrights demand we pay attention to the contradictions and injustices of life in London.
Poetic London: in this strand you will explore the long tradition of London's representation in poetry, from the eighteenth-century satires of London life in the work of John Gay and Johnathan Swift to the revolutionary, Romantic visions of William Blake, and from the city of fragments in modernist poetry to the politically charged writings of black poets Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jay Bernard.
London in Prose: in this strand we consider landmarks in London's depiction in prose, from the complex accounts of intersecting social worlds in the fiction of Charles Dickens to George Orwell's documentary-style accounts of the lives of the underclass, and Zadie Smith's experiments with form and narrative which attempt to make sense of contemporary urban and suburban life.
The module will be taught in a series of three-hour interactive lecture-workshops. These weekly sessions are flexible so as to allow detailed exploration of the set literary texts, relevant historical and social contexts, and of literary categories, forms and genres. The sessions may include presentations by the module leader, short student presentations and peer-led discussions.
| Definitive UNISTATS Category | Indicative Description | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled learning and teaching | Interactive lecture-workshops | 66 |
| Guided independent study | 234 | |
| Total (number of credits x 10) | 300 | |
Assessment for this module comprises two summative elements:
There will be several opportunities for formative assessment and feedback, including close reading exercises or short essays set for each strand as well as in-class discussion of literary texts.
| Learning Outcome | Assessment Strategy |
|---|---|
| Demonstrate a critical understanding of representation of social and physical dimensions of London across diverse forms of literature; | Assessed formatively by class discussion and close reading exercises. Assessed summatively by individual project and by essay. |
| Read literary texts from different historical periods with a high degree of understanding, recognising the key features of genre, form, and language; | Assessed formatively by class discussion and close reading exercises. Assessed summatively by individual project and by essay. |
| Produce critically-informed, incisive responses to texts that draw upon relevant conceptual frameworks | Assessed formatively by class discussion and close reading exercises. Assessed summatively by individual project and by essay. |
| Description of Assessment | Definitive UNISTATS Categories | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | 1500 word essay | 50% |
| Coursework | Individual Project | 50% |
| Total (to equal 100%) | 100% | |
It IS NOT a requirement that any major assessment category is passed separately in order to achieve an overall pass for the module.
Thomas Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 1613
George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1913
Mark Ravenhill, Shopping and Fucking, 1993
John Gay, Trivia: Or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London, 1714
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
David Jones, The Anathemata, 1952
Jay Bernard, Surge, 2017
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 1925
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933
Zadie Smith, NW, 2012
Ford, Mark, London: a History in Verse (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015)
Groes, Sebastian, The Making of London: London in Contemporary Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Levine, Nina, Practicing the City: Early Modern London on Stage (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016)
Pope, Ged, Reading London's Suburbs: From Charles Dickens to Zadie Smith (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Larrisy, Edward, The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry, 1945-2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Manley, Lawrence, The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)