Modernisms

This module will explore literary modernism as a multiple, or plural movement that, in truly modernist spirit, refuses any single definition of itself, just as one might expect of a movement that really is a movement, something that moves, and still moves and thus exceeds even itself, in particular the periodised, rationalised and generically limited version of itself, as institutionalised by the academy. The module will, then, explore a host of ‘other’ modernisms that might include: manifesto modernism, political modernism, trench-war modernism, surrealist modernism, philosophical modernism, Holocaust modernism, theatrical modernism, comic modernism, and even a modernism-for-now that incorporates a literary-critical modernism -- a modernism within literary criticism that might yet challenge the realist and, as it were, ‘Victorian’ conventions of conventional academic scholarship. You may, if you wish, submit just such experimental or, critical-creative work instead of a conventional essay for the module assignment.