Length: 2,500 words
Assessment Requirements: This assessment task requires you to discuss two works of literature studied in this unit in relation to one of the topics below. One of the texts you discuss in your essay must be a longer work (e.g. Mrs Dalloway; The Waste Land; Mother Courage and Her Children; The Sound and the Fury). The only exception to this rule is on Surrealism.
Where relevant, in your essay you may refer to examples from the visual arts that have been discussed in the lectures (e.g. painting, film).
Your essay should 1) develop a clear and coherent line of argument in relation to the set topic; 2) compare and contrast the two literary texts in relation to the set topic; 3) demonstrate an understanding of the key techniques and cultural/historical contexts of modernism, as relevant to the set topic.
Write an essay on ONE of the following topics:
1. “World’s dying out” (Mother Courage 73). Focusing on two texts we have studied this semester, compare and contrast two modernist ‘wastelands’. These could be physical, social, urban, psychic, spiritual or moral wastelands.
2. "I – I –“ he stammered.’ (Mrs Dalloway 86). Compare and contrast representations of war trauma in two texts focusing on how war trauma is connected to issues of language and communication.