Literature: Rebellion, Defiance and Breaking out

In this course we will be celebrating, criticising and discussing together writings which either portray rebellion and defiance, or which by their very style overturn the rules. There will be a range of texts for us to study across all genres: poetry, prose and drama. We will be reading together exciting modern writers such as Sarah Moss, and her starkly realistic novel The Fell, and passages from Zoe Gilbert’s risk-taking fantasy Mischief Acts. When considering protest and radicalism further back in time, we will encounter writers who challenged the status quo as part of a passionate political vision, from Martin Luther King to Claude McKay to Mary Wollstonecraft. In some texts, the very act of writing breaks the rules: we will be studying experimenters with form and style who were breaking new ground in how they shaped their style. We will be considering both the attraction and danger around those who break out of the orthodox. Questions arise around rebels, their actions – and how authors perceive them: what situations drive personal or political acts of rebellion? What is an author’s intention in presenting disobedience or unrest? How do writers portray to us the act of rebellion or the character of a rebel? Together, we shall be seeking answers.