123210 VO Literatures in English (2013S)

CONTENTS: The course will introduce students to novels and short stories by contemporary Irish women writers, i.e. authors born after 1950 who have published internationally acclaimed collections of short stories and novels between the late 1980ies and the present. Though the lecture will focus primarily on acknowledged literary works of fiction by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Claire Keegan, Anne Enright and Claire Kilroy, reference will also be made to the long tradition of fiction written by Irish and Anglo-Irish women from the 18th c. onward. Moreover, works of popular fiction, notably by writers of romance novels including Cecelia Ahern and of popular short fiction including 'chick lit', will likewise be briefly dealt with (e.g. the short fiction of Mary Rose Calahan, Patricia Scanlan, Mary Ryan, Marian Keyes, Julie Parsons, Colette Caddle, Marisa Mackle, and others). By contrasting the aesthetics, themes and motifs of popular fiction to the fiction of postmodernist and/or realist writers approved as established artists in the genre, students will be provided with literary criteria for discerning literary art from mere craftsmanship and artifice germane to popular fiction written for entertainment. The works of fiction selected will be read against the given cultural and socio-historical backgrounds; as many of the novels and short stories exhibit aspects of Irish culture and Irish identity, imagological issues ('features of Irishness') will likewise be addressed.