Undergraduate

20th century literature: texts and debates

On this page

• Summary
• Course content
• Entry
• Qualifications
• If you have a disability or additional requirement
• Course materials
• Teaching and assessment
• Students also studied
• Future availability
• How to register

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Summary

This course takes you right to the heart of twentieth-century literature – the excitement it has caused, the provocative critical debates it has generated, the political and historical influences it has developed from. Alongside close critical study of works by the century’s major literary lions (Brecht, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Chekhov and others), you will place them in the contexts in which they were first written and read, examine the debates and arguments of influential critics, and analyse alternative interpretations. The course is divided into four blocks: the function of literature; different modernisms; notions of popularity; and questions of evaluation.

Course content

In this course, you’ll study a selection of twentieth-century novels, poetry and drama, and participate in certain of the major debates that have animated twentieth-century literature and criticism. In addition to the focus on ‘texts and debates’, the course examines in detail the variety of historical contexts in which the literary texts and the critical debates have arisen. The course is organised in four blocks, with each block focusing on a particular literary debate, and comprising four texts of different genres. For each text, we undertake a close analysis of its literary language; examine its historical context(s); discuss competing critical and theoretical interpretations; and relate the particular text and its critical reception to the general debates covered in the block. The objective is that you should feel encouraged to develop your own readings of the texts by combining close critical analysis and historical contextualisation, and by orientating your views in relation to the relevant critical and theoretical perspectives.

The four blocks are: What is literature for?; Competing modernisms; Varieties of the popular and Judging literature, and the course follows a loosely chronological approach. Each block lasts for eight weeks, with the debates economically introduced at the outset, and then developed in the discussion of the four texts. Discussion is further linked in a progressive fashion from one block to the next.

Book 1, Aestheticism and Modernism contains the teaching material for the first two blocks. The introduction to Block 1 sets out the variety of ways in which the question ‘what is literature for?’ has been answered, and the succeeding four chapters focus on Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song, and Robin Skelton’s selection of 1930s British poetry.

Block 2 introduces the issues and debates concerned with the competing forms of modernist writing, and then moves on to chapters on T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo, and Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinths with Path of Thunder.

Book 2 The Popular and the Canonical contains the teaching material for the second two blocks.

Block 3 introduces the debates over the relation between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ literary forms, and these debates are taken up and focused in the chapters on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, the 1950s U.S. poetry of Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Block 4 introduces both general debates over how literature should be judged, and particular debates over judging literature in the context of literary prizes. Discussion of the Nobel Prize for Literature frames the analysis of the first two texts, which are by Nobel winners – Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Seamus Heaney’s New Selected Poems, 1966-1987. Discussion of the Booker Prize frames the analysis of the final two texts – Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise (a Booker finalist) and Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road (a Booker winner).

The third course book is Debating Twentieth-century Literature: A Reader, and it contains indispensable primary and secondary material to accompany the study of the texts and debates featured in the course. Students will need to purchase this book along with the other set texts for the course.

Entry

AZX300 is a Level 3 course. Level 3 courses build on study skills and subject knowledge acquired from previous studies at Levels 1 and 2. They are intended only for students who have recent experience of higher education in a related subject

If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.

Preparatory work

It will be to your advantage to read as many of the set literary texts as possible before the course begins. The obvious place to start is with the texts in the first two blocks, but another useful route might be to start with the eight novels in the course, as they will take longer to read.

Qualifications

AZX300 is an optional course in our

• BA (Honours) Humanities (B03)
• BA (Honours) Humanities (B03) (with Literature)
• BA (Honours) Literature (B02)
• BA/BSc (Honours) European Studies (B10)
• Diploma in Literature (D65)
• BA (Honours) English Language and Literature (B39)
• Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing (E25)

It can also count towards most of our other degrees at bachelors level, where it is suitable for a BA. We advise you to refer to the relevant qualification descriptions for information on the circumstances in which this course can count towards these qualifications because from time to time the structure and requirements may change.

Excluded combinations

Sometimes you will not be able to count a course towards a qualification if you have already taken another course with similar content.  To check any excluded combinations relating to this course, visit our excluded combination finder or check with our Student Registration & Enquiry Service before registering.

If you have a disability or additional requirement

The course materials are available on CD-ROM in ‘ReadOut’ format with navigational facilities. The books are available in a comb-bound format. Written transcripts are available for the audio-visual material. Large print versions of the course material can be provided on request. Our Services for disabled students website has the latest information about availability. You may like to consider taking A300, the non-online version of the course.

If you are a new student, or new to courses using a computer or the internet, you will need to inform us of your particular needs as soon as possible, as some of our support services may take several weeks to arrange. Details of how to do this and our range of support services are described in our booklets Meeting Your Needs and Meeting your residential school needs, which you can download or request from our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.

You can also find information about accessible course materials, financial support and the Disabled Students' Allowance, equipment and other services, on our Services for disabled students website. It also includes our contact details for advice and support both before you register and while you are studying.

Course materials

What's included

Course books, other printed materials, DVD and audio CDs, course website.

You will need

A DVD and CD player.

Computing requirements

This course includes online computer activities – you can access these using a web browser that can play Flash and Shockwave.

You will need internet access and a computer. If you have purchased a new computer since 2002 it should meet your course computing requirements. Check our Technical Requirements section if your computer is older than this or is otherwise unusual.

Teaching and assessment

Support from your tutor

You will have a tutor who will help you with the course material and mark and comment on your written work, and whom you can ask for advice and guidance. Contact with your tutor will be through email and online forums. Contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service if you want to know more about study with The Open University before you register.

Assessment

The assessment details for this course can be found in the facts box above.

You can choose whether to submit your tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) on paper or online through the eTMA system. You may want to use the eTMA system for some of your assignments but submit on paper for others. This is entirely your choice.

The end-of-course assessment (ECA) must be submitted on paper. Assessment is an essential part of the teaching, so you are expected to complete it all. But if you unavoidably miss or do badly in an assignment some courses allow you a ‘substitution score’. You will be given more detailed information when you begin the course.

Students also studied

Students who studied this course also studied at some time:

• A world of whose making? (DU301)
• Creative writing (A215)
• Governing Europe (DDZX200)
• From Enlightenment to Romanticism c.1780-1830 (A207)

Future availability

The details given here are for the course that starts in October 2009. We expect it to be available once a year.

How to register

To register a place on this course return to the top of the page and use the Click to register button. For more information and advice about registration see OU Study Explained.

About this page

An undergraduate course in Arts and Humanities.

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Student Reviews

I found this course quite heavy going and there is quite a lot of reading and so it would be ...
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This was a fantastic course and the one that completed my honours degree in Literature. From start to finish it ...
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