WEEKS 10-12

Modernism:

What does 'The Wasteland' mean?
1) how has it been interpreted? (cite examples)
2)what are some of the key features
3) In what way has it been influential


Post-Modernism

1) What common qualities do 'the beats' share? Why 'beats'?
2) How is beat poetry linked to rap?
3) How was Bob Dylan's 'Masters of War' involved in controversy during the Bush administration?
4) On what grounds was 'Howl' accused of being obscene - grounds for the defense?
5) What kind of protest song/rap other media have come out in the last decade? Is there a spirit of protest anymore?

WEEKS 7-9

1. How is the Romantic notion of the Sublime reflected in the ideological, conceptual and linguistic construction of the texts under consideration in this Romanticism reader? Discuss one or two examples...

2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...

3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).

4. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).