Literature: A Feast of Fiction 1

Over the ten weeks of the course, you’ll take part in lively discussions, analysing and interpreting great works of fiction. To understand literature, we need to engage with it on three levels: our own personal response to it as a work of art; an attempt to understand the preoccupations, aims and agenda of the writer, as illuminated by their biography; and an enquiry into what it can tell us the wider culture and society that produced it. Each class starts with a short lecture from the tutor, putting the work in its historical and cultural context; we then read selected passages and explore all three levels. Be prepared for plenty of (good-natured) disagreement. The texts under discussion include: A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by RL Stevenson; The Turn of the Screw by Henry James; Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons; The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon; The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare; and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Many of these texts are available free online, and selected passages will be posted on Canvas before each session. A course for everyone who loves literature and talking about literature. And of course tea and biscuits feature in every class.