Reading list for ENGL20491 Writing Identity and Nation

 

ENGL20491 Writing Identity and Nation

 

Course Unit Director: Dr Liam Harte

 

Preparatory Reading

 

1.      Primary Reading

By far the best way to prepare for this course is to read the longer primary works during the summer. We recommend, therefore, that you focus on the five prescribed novels, which are:

 

Gurnah, Abdulrazak. By the Sea (Bloomsbury, 2002).

Lawrence, D. H. The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes (Penguin, 2007).*

Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners, ed. Susheila Nasta (Penguin, 2006).

Smith, Zadie. White Teeth (Penguin, 2001).

Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting (Vintage, 1994).

 

* Please make sure you buy the Penguin edition of this novel. Look for ISBN-10: 0141441380 / ISBN-13: 978-0141441382.

 

Selected poems by Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney will be made available via Blackboard when the course begins. W. B. Yeats’s short play, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, will also be available on Blackboard then.

 

2.     Secondary Reading

 

For those of you who, having completed your primary reading, wish to consult some critical works, we can recommend the following:

 

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities (1991).

Bhabha, Homi (ed.). Nation and Narration (1990).

Colls, Robert. Identity of England (2002).

Crawford, Robert. Devolving English Literature (1992).

Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (1987).

Kumar, Krishnan. The Making of English National Identity (2003).

Nairn, Tom. After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland (2000).

Nairn, Tom. The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo- Nationalism (1977).

Norquay, Glenda and Smyth, Gerry (eds.). Across the Margins (2003).

Osmond, John. The Divided Kingdom (1988).

 

A full course guide will be made available via Blackboard at the start of the course. This will include details of critical works on individual authors. But for now, just concentrate on getting those five novels read!