Undergraduate Studies in English

 

English Literary Studies

 

A course in English Literary Studies focuses on the artistic productions of writers and performers who have keenly felt and deeply thought about the world in which they live. Whether these texts be poems, novels, short stories, dramatic plays, films, or music, each work has something important to say about the state of culture, society, and politics in the era in which it is produced. And in this sense, it can be called a work of literature.

 

The material selected for each module in English Literary Studies aims to explore the tensions, ambiguities, and contradictions in what it means to be human. There are no easy answers to this simple yet fundamental question. Each text thus aims to investigate the forces and powers that come to constitute the human, whether this be in an era from the past, such as Renaissance Europe, or an era closer to contemporary times, such as post-Apartheid South Africa. 

 

It is to be remembered that the literary text is a work of the imagination, where play, pleasure and joy provide an entry point to these seemingly serious topics. In English Literary Studies we focus on the image, representation, language, and expression as a mode of engagement with the particular historical moment in which it is produced. Kendrick Lamar’s song “FEAR.” has as much to say as a sonnet by Shakespeare; the Palestinian-set novel Enter Ghost has as much to say as the text on which it is based, namely, the Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet.   

 

 

A degree with English Literary Studies as a major allows graduated students to pursue the following professions:

 

 

FIRST YEAR MODULES

 

LLEV101: Introduction to Poetry

We focus on what is the essential quality of a poem by looking at both form and poetic effects, in a poet such as Sylvia Plath and rapper Kendrick Lamar. We find that emotion is evoked, and thought is provoked, in these poems.  

 

LLEV111: Introduction to Drama

We focus on the dramatic elements that constitute a theatrical play, such as the ancient Greek tragedy Antigone and the gender or sexual politics in a contemporary film, such as Promising Young Woman, but the questions about power, authority, freedom, law, justice and solidarity persist. 

 

LLEV102: Introduction to Narrative Fiction

We explore several essential aspects of a fictional story, paying attention to the structure of a narrative, by reading both a South African novel by Kopano Matlwa and a Nigerian short-story collection by Adichie.

 

LLEV112: Introduction to African Literature

We engage with several themes evident in literature from the African continent, which stage a challenge to the notions of identity, place, and relationships. Authors explored include Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola and Burundi-born writer and rapper Gaël Faye.

 

 

SECOND YEAR MODULES

 

LLEV211: Popular Literature and Subversion

We explore how literature can combine readability for entertainment with political resistance to oppression and the promotion of liberation, deepening our understanding of traumatic historical events, in two novels, namely A History of Burning and Enter Ghost.  

 

LLEV221: Literature of Africa and its Diaspora

We explore the works of writers from the African continent and beyond, touching on aspects of contemporary African writing such as Afrofuturism and magic realism. Authors explored include, among others, Lauren Beukes and Nnedi Okorafor. 

 

LLEV202: Romanticism and After

We delve deep into the 18th century European imagination to unearth the qualities that animate the underside of human reason, in gothic short stories by Poe and the dark romantic elements in a Jane Austen novel. 

 

LLEV222: The Renaissance and English Literature

We settle into 16th century Europe to discover the birth of the modern human, as concerned with notions of love, in the sonnets of Shakespeare and John Donne, and power, in Machiavelli’s The Prince and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 

 

 

THIRD YEAR MODULES

 

LLEV311: Modernism and Literature

We find here that the early 20th century produces advances in technology and science, which radically changes the experience of humans and our relation to tradition, with responses from the poet T.S. Eliot and the novelist Virginia Woolf, and a critique of the imperialist undertones of this response by the novelist Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.   

 

LLEV331: World Literature Today

The module is focused on the ways the internet has influenced contemporary world literature, both in terms of how readers discover and engage with texts, as well as how authors craft and distribute their works. We look at internet literature from around the world, including examples of interactive and collaborative literature.

 

LLEV302: South African Literature

We discuss the central issues of land, belonging, nation and identity by exploring a range of genres, namely, novels, poems, and film that speak to both our divided past and our democratic present.   

 

LLEV332: Postmodernism and Literature

The advances in the cultural movement of Modernism are taken further here, experienced as a destabilizing force that leads to a questioning of the boundaries between reality/simulation and history/fiction, in feminist short stories, postcolonial novels, and action films, such as The Matrix and Free Guy.