Concluding Blog Topics for 20th Century Literature 2020

We have started exploring some of the work of those writers who challenge the tyranny of English culture on their own lives, while at the same time demonstrating their passionate commitment to English as an expressive medium. What a paradox!

We have found this in M.Nourbese Philip and now in James Joyce. We are going to find it also in a number of other writers appearing next week.

HERE ARE SOME POSSIBLE QUESTIONS FOR YOUR FINAL BLOGS- AND REMEMBER YOU ARE PERMITTED TO CONSTRUCT YOUR OWN QUESTIONS AS LONG AS THEY LINK IN SOME WAY TO THE CONTENT WE HAVE BEEN EXPLORING:

1/ Write a poem or a short prose passage that illustrates the ways in which language can be both a prison and a release from prison.

2/Write a paragraph that continues this sentence be James Joyce and the expresses your own hopes for your life:

” I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can…..”

3/ Write a short paragraph which gives some insight into the tensions that occur in your own life between the traditions of your own family and the traditions of English Australian culture – as you perceive them.

4/ Much of the literature of the 20th Century has been written in response to momentous events such as the first and second world wars. Draw up a short list of some of the momentous events that have been hitting our planet in the last 5 years and suggest a few ways in which writers might try to make sense of any one of these events. Your response to this suggestion, might itself be a piece of creative prose or poetry.

5/ Summarise your sense of what is most powerful in the literature you have read this semester. Give a couple of powerful examples to illustrate what has touched you most.