Course Co-ordinator: Dr Timothy Baker

Pre-requisite(s): Available only to registered postgraduate students on a relevant MLitt programme or by permission of programme co-ordinators.

Note(s): May be taken by students on other programmes by permission of the programme co-ordinator.

The idea of place is central to many key twentieth-century Irish and Scottish novels. Looking at a selection of novels about rural, urban, and diasporic experience, and including both canonical and lesser-known works, this course will acquaint students with key debates in the study of regional and national fiction. Place in these novels is something to be praised and scorned, embraced and abandoned, but always remains central in any discussion or individual and communal identities. Major themes and issues to be discussed include: the idea of 'home'; the role of nostalgia and longing in Irish and Scottish fiction; the nature of community; the significance of emigration and displacement; and discussions of place in modernist and postmodernist fiction. Authors to be discussed may include James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Elizabeth Bowen, Nan Shepherd, and George Mackay Brown.

1 x 2-hour seminar per week, 6 additional 1-hour workshop.

Essay of 3000-3500 words (70%); review article of 1000-1500 words (20%); oral presentation (10%).