230275 1930s: Literature and Literary Journalism (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

This class is part of the focus semester on "Democracy".

This course focuses on (non-)fictional texts that explore the economic depression of the 1930s. In their accounts of the ‘great industrial wastelands’ in the North of England, writers address mass unemployment, poverty, malnutrition and people’s ways of dealing with the pressing financial, social and political concerns of the day. We will begin with Walter Greenwood’s realist novel Love on the Dole (1933) which explores the hardships of the working-class family Hardcastle. We will move on to George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), a milestone in modern literary journalism, in which Orwell depicts the living conditions of unemployed miners. Photographs from Bill Brandt’s collection The English at Home (1936) will also be subject to our discussion.
We will engage in close readings of these texts, e.g. in terms of genre, narration and focalisation, plot and character design. Moreover, we will locate the texts in their cultural, political and historical contexts, with special emphasis on issues such as gender, class and power as well as the living conditions in the industrial North.

Requirements for participation, required level

Students are expected to have completed Basic Module 2 "Introduction to Literary Studies".

Bibliography

Please get hold of the following texs - any editions will do:
Greenwood, Walter. Love on the Dole (1933)
Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

It is advisable to start reading Love on the Dole prior to the beginning of the semester.