Module description
‘Activist Texts: Literature and Politics, 1910-1938’ pursues two twinned aims. Firstly, to explore and contrast the diverse ways British novelists, poets, playwrights and polemicists engaged with significant socio-political events of the first half of the twentieth century. Starting with the suffrage campaign and finishing with the Spanish Civil War, we will read across genres, complicating distinctions of ‘high’ and ‘low’, examining how writers, both modernist and middlebrow, wrote these events into their texts. Secondly, the course introduces students to the protocols of archival research and the rewards of working with primary materials, including letters and diaries, newspapers and periodicals, minutes and organisational records. We will make field trips to the rich modern holdings of London archives, including The Women’s Library at the LSE and The King's College Library Special Collections. Throughout the course we will return to the question of what makes an activist text. This will involve sustained thinking about questions of form, accessibility and popularity and a good deal of close reading. By bringing a motley crew of core texts into dialogue with archival material, we will discover these works do not simply reflect their political moment, but weigh into and crucially shape contemporary debates
Assessment details
3 x archive reports totalling no more than 1500 words and a 2500-word essay focusing on one of the texts covered during the course. To be submitted as a single document at the end of semester (100%). The assessment is due at the end of semester but there will be opportunities for in-seminar peer review of draft archive reports and formative feedback on one report from your seminar leader.
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to explore and contrast the diverse ways British novelists, poets, playwrights and polemicists engaged with significant socio-political events of the first half of the twentieth century. 'Activist Texts' also introduces students to the protocols of archival research and the rewards of working with primary materials, including letters and diaries, newspapers and periodicals, minutes and organisational records
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module students will be able to:
1. Compare and contrast the way early twentieth-century writers explored their political moment across a range of genres
2. Work with a range of archival materials, including letters and diaries, newspapers and periodicals, minutes and organisational records
3. Understand how such archival materials can be drawn into dialogue with and cast light on literary texts
Suggested reading list
- Constance Maud, No Surrender (1911)
- Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room (1922)
- Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September (1929)
- Sean O’Casey, ‘The Plough and the Stars’ (1926)
- Ellen Wilkinson, Clash (1929)
- Virginia Woolf, ‘Why Art Today Follows Politics’(1936)
- Paul Robeson, ‘The Artist Must Take Sides’ (1937)