Content

Content

In the opening week of the course we will consider some of the key themes and issues involved in the approach to popular fiction: sociological issues of readership, audience, marketing and sales; semiological approaches to narrative; and cultural issues of the role and influence of popular fiction. In particular, students will explore the approaches of critics such as Q.D. Leavis, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, and their arguments concerning discrimination, 'mass culture' and 'minority culture', and 'taste', in addition to more recent Marxist and Structuralist work in Cultural Studies.
Subsequent weeks will be concerned with the detailed examination and discussion of a range of texts, studied in relation to key issues, forms and genres. The weekly programme will be:

Week(s)

Session

2 -3

'The Masculine Romance' - John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps with emphasis on issues of masculinity, action, agency and social order. Some of this session will be given over to the discussing the tradition of "Boy's Own and Manly Imperialist" writing, from the 1890s onwards, and the subsequent development of the spy/secret agent genre, to le Carre and Ludlum. Will also include reference to Geoffery Household's Rogue Male. (if possible) and Frederick Forsythe's The Day of the Jackal.

4 - 5.

'The Feminine Romance' - Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, with reference to issues of femininity, desire, sexuality, and the 'nature/culture' opposition. We will also look the 30s tradition of Romance fiction, and also David Lean's film Brief Encounter (1945)

6.	'The Feminine Romance', cont. - Catherine Cookson's The Mallen Streak

7 - 8

'The Lower Middle Class Novel' - R.F. Delderfield's To Serve them All My Days, with consideration of issues such as social class and social mobility, sexuality and gender, Englishness, and responses to contemporary history.

9 - 10.

'Images of Society and of the Nation' - John Braine's Room at the Top, but with reference also to the works of J.B. Priestley, Anthony Powell and C.P. Snow. Issues to be discussed include social class, nationality and gender.


11 - 12.		'Animal Fables' - Richard Adams' Watership Down, focussing on the use of "animal fictions" as a form of social and political allegory. Knowledge of George Orwell's Animal Farm might be useful as we will spend some time considering this.

13.	'Fornication and Shopping' - consideration of issues of sexuality, fetishism, desire, social order and capitalism in contemporary 'potboiler' fiction. The example we will consider is Jackie Collins' The World is Full of Married Men.

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Further Information

Approaches to the Study of Popular Fiction	The Thirty Nine Steps	Rogue Male
Rebecca	The Mallen Streak	To Serve Them All My Days
Room at the Top	The Midwich Cuckoos	Watership Down
The Day of the Jackal	The World is Full of Married Men