This module shows how the modern novel developed during the twentieth century and into the current century. It will allow you to read and critically assess a range of novels, recognising and engaging with different sub-genres, techniques and practices. The module also considers the novel’s relationship with contemporary cultural issues. It will be an opportunity for you to widen and deepen your knowledge of the different experiments with the genre. It will also enable you to understand the continuing appeal and relevance of the novel as the expression of a changing modern world.This module emphasises the process of reading modern novels and evaluating them critically. It is designed to give you a broad experience of canonical (Woolf and Joyce) as well as ‘alternative’ (Trocchi) and vernacular (Kelman) texts which indicate the various developments of the novel. The novels will be discussed within their cultural and historical contexts, taking in a range of different national traditions (including English, Irish, and Scottish) and ideological positions. You will be introduced to a range of periods, beginning with modernism and reaching into the postmodern (Smith). The module will also encourage you to engage with a range of key theoretical positions, such as postcolonial theory and postmodernism, which you will apply to your analysis of primary texts. The module will also look at a film (The Hours) which has a course novel as a key intertext, and this will allow you to employ a comparative examination of these mediums, as well as studying how fiction has been updated for a contemporary film audience.