BA English Literature and History

This module analyses the ‘radical turn’ of culture in Britain during the 1930s.  Casting a critical eye over dominant constructions of the ‘red decade’, it explores the often conflicted ways in which writers and other cultural intellectuals responded to economic crisis (the great slump) and political polarization (the spread of fascism and communism).   It maps the international political context—Berlin, Vienna, Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War—and analyzes texts produced in response to these tumultuous events.  It identifies some of the decade’s central cultural institutions, such as Mass Observation and the General Post Office Film Unit, assessing their objectives and the texts they produced.  Drawing on the University’s Special Collections and other local resources, the module works closely with some of the decade’s most influential ‘little magazines’, thinking about the content, formats and communities of readers assumed by publications such as Left Review and New Writing.  The core of the module comprises the close-reading of texts from a wide range of cultural forms including historical fiction (Lewis Jones, Sylvia Townsend Warner), anti-fascist dystopian fiction (Katharine Burdekin), politically engaged poetry (W.H. Auden, John Cornford, Cecil Day Lewis), documentary writing, film-making and performance (George Orwell, GPO films, ‘living newspapers’) and autobiographical prose and poetry (Christopher Isherwood, Louis MacNeice).

' To analyse 'the radical turn' in British culture in the 1930s and the debates it has provoked;
- to work with historicist methodologies to shed light on the period's cultural production;
- to introduce level 3 students to the academic study of cultural institutions and little magazines;
- to produce critical dialogue across media and genres in the light of an overarching contextual framework;
- to close read cultural material in ways sensitive to its medium, multiple contexts and formal properties.

By the end of this course students should be able to:

- describe and engage critically with dominant constructions of the 1930s;
- summarise formative international political events from the period;
- gloss key political terms (e.g. 'fascism', 'capitalism', 'patriarchy', 'communism', 'liberalism', 'socialism', 'popular front');
- explain, with reference to secondary literature, what is meant by an 'institution' and 'little magazine' in literary / cultural studies;
- list central cultural institutions and little magazines of the period, identifying their alignments, objectives and contradictions;
- plot key patterns in the culture of the period, such as the turn to 'documentary' or 'autobiographical' modes;
- make informed comparisons between texts produced across different media;
- apply and refine theoretical methodologies learnt at levels 1 and 2 through analysis of the culture of a particular moment;
- integrate contextual understanding and close analysis of individual texts in verbal contributions and academic essays;
- search online databases and external library catalogues for periodical holdings and primary archive material;
- access and work with this material physically and online;
- demonstrate skill in the close reading of cultural material;
- competently and confidently present, both verbally and in writing, the analysis produced through this close reading;
- handle arguments, supporting and clearly explaining these through illustration and the analysis of evidence;
- manage time and meet deadlines.

 Primary Texts:  

Katharine Burdekin, Swastika Night (1937; New York: Feminist Press, 1985)  

Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935; London: Vintage, 2001)  

Lewis Jones, Cwmardy (1937; Cardigan: Library of Wales, 2006)  

Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal (1939; London: Faber & Faber, 2013)  

Robin Skelton (ed), Thirties Poetry (London: Penguin, 2000)  

Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941;Oxford World Classics, 2000)  

Preliminary Secondary Reading:  

Piers Brendon, Dark Valley: a Panorama of the 1930s (London: Pimlico, 2001)  

Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker (eds), The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Volume 1, Britain and Ireland, 1880-1955 (Oxford: OUP, 2009)  

Valentine Cunningham, British Writers of the Thirties (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988)  

James Hinton, The Mass Observers: a History 1937-49 (Oxford: OUP, 2013)  

Chris Hopkins, English Fiction in the 1930s: Language, Genre, History (London: Continuum, 2006)  

Richard Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis in Civilisation, 1919-1939 (London: Penguin, 2010)  

James Smith, British Writers and MI5 Surveillance, 1930-60 (Cambridge: CUP, 2012)  

Tuition fees for home students will be £10,050 for the 2027/28 academic year. In England and Wales, tuition fees for home undergraduate students are subject to the Government fee cap, which the Government has announced will be £10,050 for the 2027/28 academic year.

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