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BTAN1001MA The English Language
Post-1945 British Culture and Literature
Tue 08.00-09.40
St. 111
Instructors: Bényei Tamás, Győri Zsolt, Rácz István, Séllei Nóra, Szaffkó Péter
This course is the third instalment of the lecture series devoted to the study of British
culture and literature from Victorian times to the present day. Like the two preceding
courses, this is an interdisciplinary enquiry into some aspects of twentieth-century (not
only post-1945) British cultural and literary phenomena. Topics to be discussed include
the cultural effects of the British Empire and its aftermath in colonial and postcolonial
literatures, the search for Scottish identity through the literary tradition, the growth of
experimental fiction, ways of conceiving postmodernism in literature, post-1945 British
poetry, drama and theatre, the cultural impact of Thatcherism, and the development and
kinds of British popular literature, including crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy and
chicklit.
The course will conclude with an examination. The list of required readings follows the
schedule.
Schedule
Date
1
15 Sept
2
22 Sept
3
4
29 Sept
6 Oct
5
13 Oct
6
20 Oct
7
8
3 Nov
9
10 Nov
10
11
12
13
17 Nov
24 Nov
1 Dec
8 Dec
14
15 Dec
Cím
Literature and the British empire
Postcolonial and diaspora
culture literature
Scottish literature
Postmodernism/1: avant-garde,
experiment, metafiction
Postmodernism/2: the
contemporary historical novel,
Neo-Victorianism
Women’s writing, feminist
literature and postmodernism
CONSULTATION WEEK
Popular literature/1: adventure,
crime, spy fiction
Popular literature/2: scienc
fiction and fantasy
Poetry after 1945/1
Poetry after 1945/2
British film after 1945
Postwar British drama and
theatre – 2
Postwar British drama and
Előadó(k)
Bényei
Tamás
BT
BT
BT
BT
BT
BT
BT, Séllei
Nóra
Rácz István
Rácz István
Győri Zsolt
Szaffkó
Péter
Szaffkó
theatre - 2
Péter
Required reading:
FICTION
1. Postmodernism-1. Samuel Beckett: Molloy OR B. S. Johnson: Albert Angelo OR
Martin Amis: Money OR Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor OR Robert Nye: Faust OR Julian
Barnes: Flaubert’s Parrot OR A. S. Byatt: Possession
2. Postmodernism -2: Historiographic metafiction, Neo-Victorian fiction: John
Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman OR Graham Swift: Waterland OR Marina
Warner: Indigo OR Sarah Waters: Affinity OR Alasdair Gray: Poor Things
3. Colonial and postcolonial fiction: E. M. Forster: The Passage to India OR J. M.
Coetzee: Foe OR V. S. Naipaul: The Mimic Men OR Sam Selvon: The Lonely Londoners
OR J. G. Farrell: The Siege of Krishnapur OR Hanif Kureishi: The Buddha of Suburbia
OR Zadie Smith: White Teeth OR Meera Syal: Anita and Me OR Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal:
Tourism
4. 1980s: Ian McEwan: The Innocent OR Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day OR D.
M. Thomas: The White Hotel OR J. G. Ballard: Empire of the Sun OR Bruce Chatwin:
On the Black Hill OR Jim Crace: Being Dead
5. Angela Carter: The Magic Toyshop OR Nights at the Circus OR Wise Children
6. Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children OR Shame OR The Satanic Verses
7. Women’s writing and postmodernism: Jeanette Winterson: Sexing the Cherry OR
OR Ali Smith: Hotel World OR Fay Weldon: The Life and Times of a She-Devil
8. Contemporary Scottish fiction: James Kelman: How Late It Was, How Late OR
Janice Galloway: The Trick Is to Keep Breathing OR Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory OR
Alan Warner: Morvern Callar OR Irvine Welsh: Trainspotting
9. Crime fiction. Agatha Christie: The Murder at the Vicarage OR Ian Rankin: Black
and Blue OR Colin Dexter: The Wench Is Dead
10. Chicklit, ladlit. Helen Fielding: The Bridget Jones Diary OR Nick Hornby: High
Fidelity OR Tim Lott: The Love Secrets of Don Juan
11. Science fiction and cyberpunk. J. G. Ballard: The Drowned World OR Olaf
Stapledon: The First and Last Man OR Michael Moorcock: Dancers at the End of Time
OR Jeff Noon: Vurt
Short fiction:
Rudyard Kipling: „The Mark of the Beast”, „The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes”
J. G. Ballard: „Low-Flying Aircraft”; „The Terminal Beach”; „Myths of the Near Future”
DRAMA
Joe Orton, Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964)
Edward Bond, Saved (1965) OR Lear (1971)
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) ORTravesties (1974)
Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine (1979) OR Top Girls (1982)
Alan Ayckbourn, Small Family Business (1987)
POETRY
To be announced and distributed in the lecture
FILM
The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962)
The Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981)