SELCS

Shorter Narrative in East and West


Course code: ELCS6040
Course Tutor: Dr Ernest Schonfield
Level: intermediate
Mode of Assessment: 3 hour desk exam
Term: taught in Term 2

Course Description:
This course will focus on short stories by canonical writers from Europe, Russia and China in order to examine the relations between literature and politics. The course will consider how the short story provided a format which enabled writers to explore the challenges posed by global and political modernity. Texts by Guy de Maupassant, Chekhov, Lu Xun, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Italo Calvino will be studied in chronological order from the late nineteenth century through to the mid-twentieth century. The course will combine narratological and socio-political analysis in order to show how new narrative techniques were developed in response to social and poltical changes. The course will also consider the internationalisationof literary modernism in conjunction with the global spread of industrial and economic modernity.The course will include individual student presentations.

Primary Texts:

  • Guy de Maupassant, Best Short Stories/Les Meilleurs Contes (Dual-Language Book),(Dover)
  • Anton Chekhov, Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895 (Penguin)
  • Lu Xun, The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China (Penguin)
  • Stories by Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Italo Calvino (stories provided on Moodle)

Initial Secondary Bibliography:

  • H. P. Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, Cambridge 2002
  • Peggy Chaplin, Guy de Maupassant: Boule de suif, Glasgow 1988
  • R. L. Johnson, Anton Chekhov: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York, 1993)
  • Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture and Translated Modernity – China, 1900-1937, Stanford, 1995