| Unit name | Writing the Self: Literature and Autobiography |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL30107 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Bennett |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit focuses British and American literary texts from the nineteenth century to the present that take as their theme the life of the writer. The unit explores the relationship between life and text as it is figured in memoirs, poetry, and autobiographical fiction (‘autofiction’). We will examine a number of key texts published over the last two centuries, including poems and poem-collections, novels, short stories, memoirs, and essays. A consideration of such texts will necessarily lead into critical, theoretical, and literary-historical questions concerning the nature of biography and autobiography; the historical development of autobiography as a genre; the relationship between fiction and history; memory, forgetting and the unconscious; the nature of confession and questions of personal identity; the politics of gender, class, nationhood and ethnicity in relation identity formation and self-representation; the limits of genre; ‘literary’ and other writing.
The unit is intended to provide an introduction to literary autobiography, to fictionalized autobiography, and to questions surrounding such modes of writing; it is intended to encourage students to develop their skills of critical analysis and thinking by engaging with a series of literary texts particularly concerned with the life of the writer and the critical and theoretical issues raised thereby.
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate advanced knowledge and understanding of key autobiographical texts and authors of the period;
2. Apply a thorough understanding of a range of historical, cultural and intellectual contexts to readings of these texts;
3. Discriminate between and analyse different critical and theoretical perspectives on autobiographical writing;
4. Present and critically assess pertinent evidence to develop a cogent argument;
5. Demonstrate advanced skills in close textual analysis, argumentation, aspects of literary theory, and critical interpretation using evidence from primary texts and secondary sources.
One 2 hour seminar per week.
One 2000 word summative essay (40%) [ILOs 1-2, 4-5].
One 3000 word summative essay (60%) [ILOs 1-5].
William Wordsworth, The Two-Part Prelude (1799)
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Virginia Woolf, ‘A Sketch of the Past’ (1939-40)
David Vann, Legend of a Suicide (2008)
Linda Anderson, Autobiography (2nd edn., Routledge, 2011)
Laura Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses (Manchester, 1994)
