Faculty of Arts,
Chulalongkorn University
2202441
British Fiction from the Twentieth Century to the Present
Puckpan Tipayamontri
Office: BRK 1106
Office Hours: M 1–3
and by appointment
Phone: 0 2218 1780
puckpan.t@chula.ac.th
Mapping
British Fiction
Our reading of British fiction in the
last century and this culminates in a couple of related events: 1) a
ten-minute presentation, and 2) a 5–7-page final paper.
1.
Insights into British Fiction Presentation
Quick
View
- 10 minutes
- Thursday, May 12, 2022, 7–8 p.m.
(Join session)
- Present your current topic
findings
Detailed
Instructions
Think
of this as a work-in-progress colloquium where you present the findings
of your topical investigation for peer critique and conversation. The
topics for this (see below for suggestions) should be the same as your
paper so that feedback from the forum can help you fine tune your
written analysis, but this is not an inflexible requirement. The process
of textual study has begun from the beginning of our course and you have
also made headway into your specific final topics several weeks back,
but here are some reminders of the literary engagement that might help
you design an effective and illuminating project:
- Collecting data: As you
collect examples from the text on your topic, the quality of your data
depends on how thorough and perceptive you are about what to include.
Sometimes the sample is obvious, with overt naming and labeling on the
subject, but sometimes the text gives you implied information,
allusions, and abstract qualities that require an attentive eye to see
the connections and relevance. This latter might be most crucial of
all as a feature of the literary work that distinguishes it from
others and shows off the author's creativity and undertaking. Also,
though the primary text is the main focus of your study, your topic
might benefit from data in other sources as well such as author
interviews, biographical information, and their other writings that
corroborate or illuminate the topical ideas of the text in question.
- Analyzing the data: Look at
the data you have recorded and play around with several ways to make
sense of it by arranging it into different groupings. Often, the most
provocative and initially disconnected-seeming categories can provide
fascinating insights into the information gathered. Some sample
topic-specific analysis questions are given with the topic suggestions
below. The following are general guidelines to get you started that
we've used in class:
- Genre
and medium: What is the fictional genre? What is its medium?
How is it used?
- Topic:
How unusual, thought-provoking or intriguing is the topic (in our
case the topic of animals, plants, camera action, smell, or food)?
- Engagement:
Even if the topic is broad or popular (like time, gender, class,
race, love, or change), the literary text might elaborate on a
non-cliche angle of it, or approach it in unexpected ways. What
issues or facets of the topic does the work address and delve into
most extensively? Why is this worth noticing?
- Point
of view: How is the topic or engagement framed? From what
perspectives is the topic presented? Why is this significant?
- Illustration:
How does the work convey and flesh out its ideas on the topic? What
techniques are used to present the concepts and issues that stem
from the topic?
- Originality:
What is unique about the work? In what way?
- Organization:
What is noteworthy about how the work is structured and the order in
which information and chapters are arranged?
- Style,
technique: Is the work realistic, spare, flowery, muscular,
subtle or in-your-face? What devices and techniques are used in the
story and how effective are they in making the topic compelling?
- Implications:
Anybody can collect data. Aside from the incisiveness of analyses,
what makes one discussant's or researcher's ideas more fun,
stimulating, worthwhile or memorable than another's is what they see
and tease out in terms of the intertwining of ideas and issues, and
their consequences. What is the meaning of what you have found on
the topic? Take COVID-19, for example. People can list how many
strains there are, but it takes an observant and thoughtful person
to envision and interpret the repercussions of that mutability of
the virus, that its speed and the habitat conditions that we make
for it globally will have consequences on art, muntjak deer,
wildflower meadows, internet investors, and everyday people in the
form of new songs from Ben Barnes, Jeff Bezos being $70 billion
richer in 2020, regular Chula classes going fully online, and
twenty-year-old students developing back pain. After making your
analysis and arguments, this concluding part where you discuss the
implications of your findings is one of the most exciting segments
of your work.
- Organizing the data: The order in which you give information
that you find makes a difference in how easily your audience can
follow the logic of your arguments and how powerful the impact of your
findings has on them. With ten-minutes to lay out your case, choose
carefully what to include so that you can speak in depth on key points
instead of reading through a list of items with little observation and
discussion. It makes sense that the organization of your ten-minute
presentation be organic to your findings and argument, but it might
include
- An illustrative data set that
seems counterintuitive and one that is characteristic of the topic.
- Key observations of what you
have found.
- Proposals of what insight(s)
this topic provides on the literary work(s) as a whole.
- Presenting the data: Design
your presentation to fit your information and communicative style. You
can speak only, use audio-visual aids, solicit input from classmates,
etc. Etiquette for each helps you make the most of your format. Here's
an example guideline for PowerPoint.
2.
Mapping British Fiction Final Paper
Quick
View
- 5–7 pages
- MLA format
- Due Friday, May
27 June 3, 2022 at 4:00 p.m. by e-mail (due date extended as per your request)
Detailed
Instructions
The
written discussion of your topics study is the final paper, where you
plot your findings as a diagram or map that illustrates the subject’s
distribution within a contextual framework and analyze that resulting
picture. There are two components to the paper: 1) the map, and 2) the
analysis. Here is an opportunity to review the overall picture of
British fiction from the last century to the present, and to focus
specifically on a work and an issue within that work, or a period (like
a decade) and an issue within that literary history to tell the story of
this remarkable creative production that has influenced the world,
continues to do so, and is also influenced by the outrageously diverse
and dynamic world in turn. The map pages count as part of your 5–7 pp.
total.
1.
The Map
This
can be as simple as items or clusters of items arranged/typed on a
literary plot line, or as elaborate and multifaceted as an infographic
(cf. Nathaniel Perlman's "A Visual History of the American Presidency" for
extreme complexity and inclusiveness, Berny Tan's "A Visual Guide to References in T. S. Eliot's The
Waste Land (1922)" as a mapping of one topic within one work, and
"EU Were Always on My Mind" as a simple map of news
vs. Brexit comments). Your map component should include
- Your topical map; a visualization of
your findings
- A brief commentary on your map,
explaining your data visualization decisions, addressing challenges
and how you solved them (about one page double-spaced)
2.
The Paper
Throughout
the semester, with our scrapbook entries, reading responses and writing
exercises, we have experimented and practiced several ways to formulate
an idea or argument, from reading, note-taking, discussing, and
researching to outlining, writing, and revising. We have also explored
several ways to structure arguments into compelling, coherent and
unified essays. One guideline we used is the basic
- Open with an intriguing
object/element (hook) and orient the reader (Set up the
thesis/argument and scope of your discussion).
- Unpack and analyze the intriguing
object/element that develops your argument.
- Illustrate and support your points
with textual evidence (and research findings, if necessary).
- Conclude with assessment of your
discussion and its implications.
Apply
what you have honed from these strategies, practices and examples
encountered in the course to your final paper.
Paper Topics
Choose
any of the following ideas to pursue: investigate that concept in the
literary work(s) and develop your findings into an argument that you lay
out in the presentation and paper.
- Habitat of Happiness
- Animals
What does the map of animals in this novel look like?
- How does Happiness define
animals? In what ways is the novel's definition and depiction of
animals different from popular portrayals? What aspects and forms
of animals does the story encompass? Are humans animals? What do
animals mean if humans don't count? Who decides these categories?
Are there multiple meanings of animals presented? If so, what are
they?
- How many kinds or species of
animals are depicted, with what range in size, number,
space/geography, time, color, behavior/ability, fate, and roles?
Which animal or types of animals are highly represented in the
novel? When are they mentioned and in connection to what other
things, people, or events?
- Who benefits from animals
and how?
- Aside from value in terms
of benefits (to humans?), what other values or meanings of animals
does the novel offer?
- How are animals portrayed
(ex. as intelligent, evil, beautiful, individual, pitiful, funny,
powerless, playful, amazing, normal, talkative)? What forms do
they take? What connections are made between their depictions and
their characteristics or roles?
- What do animals do in the
novel?
- How do animals shape the
language of the story? How do they impact other things (ex. lives,
psychology, history, politics, law, medicine, commerce, climate,
plot, humor) and vice versa? Consider, for instance,
- '[...] Hippos once
wallowed in Trafalgar Square.' (chapter 9, p. 132)
- Attila and Tano's
visit to the zoo (chapter 10, pp. 155–56)
- Climate/weather action
- Food
What is the foodscape of this novel? How does Happiness portray
food and engage with the idea of food? Some ideas you might
consider:
- How many different ways is
food mentioned in the novel? For example, which foods appear by
brand, by menu name, by ingredient, food group,
flexibility/transformability, which as a generic noun? How does
the method of naming these food items influence its meaning and
perception (such as in terms of value, familiarity/exoticism,
desirability, or even its being considered as food at all)?
- How might the food depictions
in this novel be categorized (ex. by consumer, by function (as
symbol, plot device, characterization, joke, gift, art, weapon,
communication/language, economic commodity, medicine, as alive, as
dead/inanimate, etc.), by culture/nationality, by age (How ancient
is this food/ingredient?), by method, difficulty, mastery of
preparation, or amount of processing, by nutrition, by source
material (such as from plants, animals, minerals, land, sea,
laboratory), by availability, by taste, by how far it has
traveled, by importance)?
- Who makes food, how, and for
whom?
- Who eats food and how? When
is food not eaten? Why? What is the nature and function of feeding
and eating, even thinking about cooking, feeding or
eating? Some scenes to consider:
- The wolfer's trapping in
"The Last Wolf"
- Eastern Bosnia,
Winter 1995 (chapter 4, pp. 66, 67, 69, 70)
- Osman said he was
Muslim too, but not that much Muslim. (chapter 9, p.
133)
- "Among the dancers
nobody spoke and among the onlookers nobody drank or ate."
(chapter 12, p. 187; p. 191, 196–97)
- Dinner with the Quells
in Sussex (chapter 13 pp. 204–06; chapter 14, p. 213)
- Adama and Attila at the
café (chapter 14, pp. 220–23)
- Accra, 2009 (pp.
266–72)
- Doctors' household
food preparation
- In the Accra camp
(pp. 270–71)
- What are some scenes in
which food is a significant element? Why? What is food doing in
those descriptions or situations?
- How do individuals or
cultures perceive food differently? What does food signify at
different points in the novel?
- What things in the novel
co-occur with or are associated with food? What things depend on
food and what does food depend on? How might you describe the
habitat or ecology of food in this story?
- What angles and pictures
of food emerge from the novel and why are they worth noticing and
discussing?
- Internal/mental life
- Landscape, cityscape,
interiorscape
- Lens/camera action; perspective;
organization
Notice the lens work of this novel.
- Order; sequence: What does
the novel's "camera lens" point to first, second, later, last?
What connections are there between the camera action sequence and
the linearity or nonlinearity of the story? Examine scenes where
the camera movement is unusual. What is remarkable about the order
of appearance of information or of subjects?
- Framing: How widely or
narrowly does the novel's "lens" frame its subjects and scenes?
When and why? In various scenarios, what are included in the frame
and how are they positioned within it? What meanings are created
with each composition and why is it significant?
- Subjects: Consider the kinds
of things the novel trains its focus on. How might you group the
subjects covered in Happiness (ex. actions, things,
people, animals, landscape, smells, textures, concepts, near, far,
human, extra-human, static/cliché/predictable,
multi-dimensional/dynamic, individuals, systems, false dialog,
happiness synonyms/examples, lenses)? At which points does the
novel lens show an unusual perspective, point to an unexpected
object, or construct an ironic sequence?
- Does the novel's lens
treat different subjects the same way? Does it give close ups of
some but not others? Does it give more time to some but not
others? What is the effect of this?
- Action: What does the novel
lens do, and what is the effect of that action? Does it move
backward as well as forward? Tilt up or down, juxtapose,
telescope, zoom in, record, replay, skip, skim?
- Speed: How does the speed
of camera movement change at different points of the novel? Why
does the camera slow or stop at a particular time and track
quickly at others? When does it pan, swerve, skip or jump, and
when are its actions smooth?
- What other lens work do
you notice and what is meaningful about it?
- Catalyst, enhancers,
dampers: What changes one's perspective? Some scenes to consider:
- The young man and the
sycamore he is tasked to cut down (chapter 22 pp. 293–96)
- Jean's relationship
with Luke
- Rosie
- Tano
- Light Bright
- Adama Sherriff
- Tano's search
party
- Accra, 2009
(chapter 18 pp. 266–72)
- Eastern Bosnia,
winter 1995 (chapter 4 pp. 65–70)
- Nonverbal life
- What is expressed or
achieved nonverbally in the novel?
- When is movement, gesture,
eye contact (or avoidance), or touch used? Why? How do they
compare to their verbal counterparts in terms of effectiveness or
communication? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the
nonverbal? When is the verbal unnecessary or detrimental?
- Investigate the function
and meaning of body language and nonverbal action in the story.
Some scenes to consider:
- The wolfer and the
wolves
- Light Bright
- The woman who wants
Jean's Wild Spaces on her roof
- Kathleen Branagan's
class (chapter 2, pp. 23–24)
- The silver man
- Dancing in a Cuban town
(chapter 12, pp. 186–87)
- In cases where the
verbal and nonverbal expressions diverge, what is the outcome?
What is the effect of multiple but perhaps contradictory messages
coming from each type of expression? How does the nonverbal
counter or override the verbal, or vice versa?
- Plants
- How many plants or plant
products are mentioned in the novel? What forms do they take?
- How might they be
categorized?
- What range do they cover
in terms of type/kinds, size, time period, geography, form, or
function (ex. ecological, economic, architectural, historical,
political, gastronomic, sentimental, literary)?
- Where do plants figure in
the novel? When are they used metaphorically, imaginatively,
symbolically, allegorically or digitally, and when physically? How
are they portrayed or described? Which are named? What kinds of
names are given? Which parts, features or characteristics of the
plant are described and by whom? What does the plantscape tell us
about its creator or inhabitants?
- What do plants mean to
different characters or entities? For example, what is the
significance of plants for Jean, for Light Bright, for the woman
who wanted "Wild Spaces" on her roof, for sound, for air, or for
the weather? What ideas or issues emerge in the novel that involve
a plant, plants or some form of plants? In what ways are plants
involved in music, the visual arts, philosophy, technology,
medicine, the past or the future? Some passages to especially
consider:
- The "dead tree" in
Nunhead Cemetery (chapter 22 pp. 293–96)
- Jean's Wild Spaces
projects (chapter 1 pp. 19–21, chapter 3 p. 50, chapter 22 pp.
299–300)
- How active are plants
in the novel? In what ways do they shape or change other things?
For example, what impact do they have on memory, mood, social
status, identity? Do/can plants kill? Can they move, make
sounds/speak, create and emit scent, deceive? What else do plants
do in the novel?
- Smellscape
Why does a sensory perception and imagery that is usually absent or
periphery in many other fiction seem so prominent in this novel?
What does a smell map of Happiness reveal?
- What gives off scent in the
novel? What does not?
- How frequently are smells
mentioned, when, and to what effect?
- How is smell used in the
story? What is made visible or invisible through smell? Some
passages to consider:
- Eastern Bosnia,
Winter 1995 (chapter 4, p. 66)
- Sierra Leone, 2000
(chapter 9, p. 145–48)
- New England, 2009
(chapter 11, p. 184)
- Rosie at Three
Valleys (chapter 12, pp. 189–91)
- Jean and Attila
(chapter 17, pp. 255–56)
- Jean working on
the roof of her Wild Spaces client (chapter 22, p. 299)
- When is smell referred
to explicitly and when implicitly? What difference is there in
terms of literary effect? When scent is implicit, how is it
suggested? For instance, can one drink coffee without smelling it,
see and feel rain without smelling it, hear cars passing by on the
street and not smell its fumes, walk on the beach and not smell
the sea?
- Who smells what?
- How is smell
differently meaningful to different entities or characters? What
is the significance of these varying smellscapes?
- Soundscape
- What sounds appear in
the story? Which sounds, rarely represented, are heard here?
- What do you notice
about the language used to describe different sounds? How does
diction color a sound as positive or negative? What values or
meanings does this novel give to certain sounds? In what ways do
these descriptions differ from stereotypical associations?
- How does the novel
treat the absence of sound? When is quiet or silence preferred to
sound?
- Verbal life
- What difference, if
any, is there between spoken and written words? How does the novel
represent accents in spoken vs. written instances?
- What difference, if
any, is there between handwritten and digitally written words?
- How effective are
words compared to actions?
- What do words do
in this novel?
- What weight does
the novel give to the words of different speakers?
- What languages
are represented in the story and how are they portrayed? What
meanings are attached to "foreign" words vs. English ones? How do
French items on the menu fare compared to pepper soup?
- Worldscape
- Breaking the Rules
Map the faultlines of correctness/incorrectness in British fiction.
- When and where do characters
(human and nonhuman) break rules? Why? Who breaks rules? How?
- When are rules intentionally
broken and when are they not?
- What rules or kinds of rules
(legal, religious, social, cultural, national, international,
technological, physical/biological, ethical, familial, personal,
design/fashion, literary, linguistic, logic/rationality, etc.) do
they break?
- What is the effect of rule
breaking? Which instances of rule violation result in punishment and
which do not? What punishments are given? When is not following the
rules a good thing? What are the benefits of disobedience?
- Are there double/multiple
standards, where a certain person or group can do something and
another cannot? What exceptions are made for which entities? Why do
rules not apply equally to all types or groups of community members?
- Who enforces rules? How?
- Do all rules and laws have
the same weight? If not, which laws take precedence over which?
- What do transgressions and
responses to them reveal?
- How does rule breaking
correlate with justice?
- Mapping the World in British Fiction
How big or diverse is the British literary global imagination? This
topic can be done with one work to investigate its global range or
with multiple works to map a changing worldscape over time.
- How many British and non-British
places are mentioned in the story?
- How wide-ranging are they
distributed on a world map?
- How small or large are the
geographical references? For instance, is it an entire hemisphere, a
continent, an ocean, skin color, language, a city, weather, park,
neighborhood, street, or shop?
- What associations are conveyed
with each world item or reference? For instance, which places are
friendly, other, ambiguous, desirable or imaginary?
- Through what devices are world
references mentioned or suggested? Perhaps a place in the world is
suggested through music, via a poem, a book, a tree, technology, or
famous figure?
- Mapping Theoretical and Critical
Engagements
There are several investigations that involve this. One might be to
map how British fiction is studied and where (looking at syllabi,
undergraduate and graduate reading lists, journal articles and
keywords), another might be to plot how effective or how out-of-touch
the critical ideology and discourse is in matching up with the actual
literary texts. Pair a critical text below with a fictional piece and
test the revelations and shortcomings of criticism.
- Mapping the Extra-Real
Virginia Woolf, in her essay "Modern Fiction," famously ridicules the
realistic sensibility and style that attempts but "more often misses
than secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit,
truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and
refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we
provide" (153). British fiction has experimented with styles other
than the kind of verisimilitude that is life-like "down to the last
button of their coats in the fashion of the hour" (154). What do these
"extra-real" narrative possibilities look like?
- In what ways is the text
unrealistic?
- What techniques are used
that make it non-realist?
- Are their jarring moments
in the story where usual realism is replaced by something else? If
so, at what points does this occur? What does the break from realism
achieve?
- Mapping Change
It makes sense to focus on one work if it is a long one, like a novel
(ex. The Shadow-Line, Animal Farm, On the Black
Hill, The Sense of an Ending, Happiness), and to
examine several if they are shorter selections (ex. Renegade, or
Halo2; "A Sahib's War," Possession, Watchmen,
"Falling on Deaf Ears," "The Witness for the Prosecution").
- Who and what changes? When
and why?
- What is the nature and
function of transformation in the work(s)?
- What kinds of change are
depicted (ex. changes in hair style, age, attitude, aesthetics,
ability, identity, importance, sexuality, class, status, governance,
location, marital status, emotion, landscape, soundscape)?
- Through what means do
these changes occur?
- How do the changes
involve or affect other elements in the text, and what are their
functions in the story as a whole?
- Mapping the
Incomprehensible
Where are the limits of human understanding? Literature, on one hand,
exists because of commonality (shared language, grammar, nature,
emotions, etc.). On the other, imaginative fiction asks readers to be
and to perceive something else. This is often the ingredient that
makes the experience of literature exciting, intellectually
stimulating, and emotionally engaging. How far can fiction take this
provocation and what does it illustrate when understanding stops? Map
the hot points that challenge comprehension.
- What moments in the
story are marked as confounding? Why? What characters, issues or
circumstances are presented as puzzling, impenetrable, nonsensical,
irrational or open to misunderstanding?
- What synonyms or
figurative language are used to convey the sense of incomprehension?
Is it described in terms of irrationality, denial, being
unscientific, ungrammatical, outrageous, out of touch with reality,
immorality, beyond humanity, or another yardstick?
- In each case, what
are the reasons that hinder cognitive connection? Why does something
not make sense (to a character, to an alien, to the reader)? At what
point does the human imaginative and cognitive power fail?
- When is the inability
to understand described in terms of madness? Why is this
significant?
- What consequences,
if any, are given for lack of understanding?
- When faced with the
inconceivable, how do different characters cope or get around it?
- White British Males
Is it long overdue that this population group is brought out of its
default human category in British fiction and scrutinized? While
women, the Irish, Scottish, Black, Asian and others have often been
gender, racially, or ethnically marked and studied, the Anglo Saxon
(Protestant, heterosexual, middle class, urban) men who populate the
literature frequently receive a neutral pass when analyzed,
unencumbered by the similar burden of carrying their ethnicity, gender
or culture as a representative figure. Investigate whether this is
true by examining three works, each written or published at least
twenty years apart.
- What physical
description is given for white British male characters? How does
this compare to "other" characters? When, if at all, is their color
or Caucasian race remarked upon?
- Who or what, if
anything, do white British males represent?
- What is their "screen
time"? How much narrative space is devoted to the story and
description of these characters? How central or peripheral are they
to the story?
- What are their
experiences and how do these events and treatment shape them? What
life privileges and challenges do they encounter and what is their
reaction to them?
- What does the
language associated with white British men (and boys) reveal about
them? How does this change, or not, over the decades between the
three works you have chosen to compare? How would you map their
representation to show their changing (?) roles and meaning?
- Why is it justified
or problematic that the white male is often unquestioned as the
default and universal human?
- Mapping Time
The saying ars longa, vita brevis captures one of literature's
obsessions with time. The fictional space also allows for incredibly
creative manipulation and discussion of time.
- How is time used in
the work(s)?
- What are its
functions and why is it significant?
Revision
Here are some guidelines from my own professor on rewriting to fix
problems regarding the idea, support, prose, organization, mechanics,
and style to make your paper more effective. Things to keep in mind as
you proofread and edit your work:
- Does my title show that I have a
point to make?
- Is my point sound, clear, and
interesting?
- Have I supported my point with
compelling evidence?
- Is the organization of my paper
logical and appropriate to the points I am making?
- Is my language clear, consistent,
and suited to the subject matter?
- Do each of my paragraphs have a
clear point and coherence?
- Have I incorporated quotations
smoothly into my own prose?
- Do I provide balanced discussions of
the quotes I cite?
- Are my sentences varied,
interesting, and effective?
- Do my verbs agree with their
subjects? Pronouns with their nouns?
- Is my paper free of spelling
mistakes?
- Have I cited my sources properly?
Writing
Home
| British
Fiction from the Twentieth Century to the Present |
English Resources
Last updated May 27, 2022