Teaching Responsibility

LJMU Schools involved in Delivery:

Humanities and Social Science

Learning Methods

Lecture

Seminar

Workshop

Module Offerings

5130ENGL-SEP-MTP

Aims

1. To survey a range of working-class literary traditions and genres from the nineteenth century through to present times. 2. To examine the relationship between literary form and social class. 3. To critically analyse the representation of social class in literature. 4. To introduce students to key issues and developments in British working-class history and politics from the nineteenth century through to contemporary times.

Learning Outcomes

1.
Evaluate the relationship between literary form and social class.
2.
Reflect on the ways in which working-class writers have appropriated and developed a range of literary and non-literary forms, from the nineteenth-century through to contemporary times.
3.
Critically evaluate the representation of social class in literature.
4.
Demonstrate a knowledge of how texts on the module intersect with relevant issues and developments in working-class history and politics.

Module Content

Outline Syllabus:Prison voices. Chartist writing and the radical press. Working-class autobiography. Critical perspectives (Karl Marx, E.P.Thompson, Carolyn Steedman). The working-class novel Kitchen sink realism Writing in the age of Thatcher Contemporary working-class Writing Contemporary writing about poverty Indicative texts: This will vary depending on the teaching team, but may include the following: selection of nineteenth-century criminal broadsides, convict love tokens, and Old Bailey court reports; excerpts from Thomas Martin Wheeler, Sunshine and Shadow, and a selection of Chartist poetry; Hannah Mitchell, The Hard Way Up, the Autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, Suffragette and Rebel; Walter Greenwood, Love on the Dole; Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey; Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner; Alan Bennett, Talking Heads; Kit de Waal, Common People; Kerry Hudson, Lowborn.
Module Overview:
This module covers a range of working-class literary traditions and genres from the nineteenth century to the present. You will examine the relationship between literary form and social class, consider how working-class writers have appropriated and developed particular genres, and explore the intersections between class and other markers of identity.
Additional Information:Green Victorians explores how Victorian writers responded to environmental changes. It examines key historical and intellectual developments shaping debates about the natural world in the Victorian period and encourages students to make links between the historical past and current modes of environmentalism. Students will be introduced to scholarship at the intersection of Victorian studies and the environmental humanities.

Assessments

Essay

Essay