A selection of prize winning books from the last 1-2 years. Literary competitions may be from a wide variety of sources.

Bradford, Richard (2007). The Novel Now: contemporary British fiction. Blackwell.

English, James F. (2006) A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction. Blackwell.

Lane, Richard J. (2003) Contemporary British Fiction. Polity.

Luckhurst, R. & P. Marks, (1999) Literature and the Contemporary: fiction and theories of the present. Longman.

Mengham, R. (1999) An Introduction to Contemporary Fiction: international writing in English since 1970. Polity, 1999.

Morrison, Jago. (2003) Contemporary Fiction. Routledge.

Nicol, Brian. (2002) Postmodernism and the Contemporary Novel: a reader. Edinburgh University Press.

OHP
Video/DVD
Library
Internet

The Blackboard virtual learning environment will be available (where relevant) to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook.

A learning diary length 2000 words weighted at 25%. An end of semester essay length 4000 words weighted at 75%.

[Learning Outcomes 1,3,4]
(75%) [Learning Outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The module will survey a selection of recent prize winning fiction, or fiction which has recently been nominated or short listed for literary prizes such as the Man Booker, the Costa (formerly 'Whitbread'), the Orange Broadband (formerly 'Orange') and the Pulitzer prize. The texts will be approached from the point of view of judging literature and students will take on board concepts such as taste, genius, originality and the debates surrounding concepts of 'high', 'low', popular and mass culture. Students are expected to formulate their own approaches to the texts within the workshop - this module will demand a high level of original critical interaction with each text.
The learning diary is expected to show students' reflection on the different critical approaches developed in the workshops. The final essay will require students to formulate and reason their own criteria for judging literature and apply this to a selection of 2 or 3 texts in order to award their own literary 'prize'.
The module is aimed at developing students of literature into literary critics with their own values, intellectual judgement and independent critical voice.

Contact teaching will be through weekly 2-hour workshops. Students will be expected to work both independently (on research and preparation for both classes and assessments) and as part of a team (on some class exercises and non-assessed presentation work).