MODULE SPECIFICATION TEMPLATE
MODULE DETAILS
Module title
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Level
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Culture Wars: Creating the ‘Great Divide’
LL660
20 credits
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6 x
Level 0 (for modules at foundation level)
Level 7
Level 8
Entry criteria for registration on this module
Pre-requisites
None.
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equivalent
Co-requisite modules
None.
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equivalent
Module delivery
Mode of delivery
Taught
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Distance
Placement
Pattern of delivery
Weekly
x
Block
Other
When module is delivered
Brief description of module
content and/ or aims
Overview (max 80 words)
Module team/ author/
coordinator(s)
School
Site/ campus where
delivered
Online
Semester 1
Semester 2
x
Throughout year
Other
The module will revisit the arguments/ historical analyses contained
in the model of a 'great divide' tearing apart British ‘culture’ in the
inter-war years. The module will provide ways for students to
explore what happened to ‘Culture’ when it split into the
categories of ‘good culture’ and ‘mass culture’. We will consider
the way key ‘literary’ novelists (including Graham Greene, Aldous
Huxley, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell), contributed to a critique of
‘mass culture’ as inadequate culture. Our entry point into these
debates will be the anxieties expressed about ‘the masses’ in the
novels, short stories and essays of a range of important inter-war
writers both modernist and non-modernist.
Patricia McManus
Humanities
Falmer
Course(s) for which module is appropriate and status on that course
Course
Status (mandatory/ compulsory/
optional)
BA (Hons) English Language and Literature/ Media/ Linguistics Optional
BA (Hons) English Literature
Optional
BA (Hons)Media and English Literature
Optional
Module descriptor template: updated Aug 2014
BA (Hons) Film and Screen Studies
BA (Hons) English Literature and Creative Writing
BA (Hons) English Language and Creative Writing
BA (Hons) Linguistics
BA (Hons) Language
BA (Hons) English Literature and Linguistics
Optional
Optional
Optional
Optional
Optional
Optional
MODULE AIMS, ASSESSMENT AND SUPPORT
Aims
The aims for this module are set into the context of the QAA
Framework for Higher Education Qualifications and they relate to the
SEEC level descriptors for Level 6 study. This module aims to:
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Develop students’ understanding of a range of debates about
the meanings of cultural ‘taste’.
Introduce students to discussions about the cultural politics of
the inter-war years.
Use an array of English novels published in the 1920s and
1930s to familiarise students with how literature may register
historical antagonisms stylistically or formally as well as
thematically.
Provide students with a historical and theoretical vocabulary
sufficient to navigate the ways in which novels reflect,
challenge, articulate and seek to define the world they live in.
Examine the processes through which cultural categories were
modelled on social categories – with ‘highbrow’ culture
occupying the position of the frail but valuable aristocrats,
‘middle-brow culture’ the smug and pompous bourgeoisie, and
‘low-brow culture’ the sprawling mess of the working classes.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to::
1. Demonstrate a critical knowledge of a range of inter-war novels
in terms of their formal innovations and thematic concerns (LO
1)
2. Demonstrate a detailed awareness of the core formative
debates about cultural value in the inter-war years, and an
awareness of how these debates relate to the stylistic patterns
of literary texts (LO2)
3. Demonstrate a critical application of different literary-historical
methods and theoretical approaches to formal innovation and
continuity in the history of the English novel (LO 3).
4. Demonstrate the connections possible between the literary
forms of fiction (the novel and short stories) and other
discursive formations (polemics, essays, literary criticism,
cultural commentary) (LO4)
Content
A selection of English novels, short stories and essays from the 1920s
and 1930s will be used to negotiate core or formative tensions in the
cultural history of the 1920s and the 1930s. Texts will be studied in the
light of the following indicative content:
 Historicising relations between writers, texts and publics or
readers in the 1920s and 1930s.
 Relating the formal peculiarities of fictional texts to social and
political shifts in the value of ‘culture’.
Module descriptor template: updated Aug 2014

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Relating fictional texts to developments in the patterns of
production, circulation and distribution in the inter-war
publishing industry.
Relating developments in the writing and reading of literary
texts to technological changes in the fields of ‘entertainment’.
Indicative Texts
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1869)
E.M. Forster, Howard’s End (1910)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps (1923)
Graham Greene, Stamboul Train (1932)
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (1934)
Q. D. Leavis, Fiction and the Reading Public (1932)
Graham Greene, Brighton Rocks (1938)
George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
Ralph Fox, The Novel and the People (1937)
Wydham Lewis, Men Without Art (1934)
Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)
Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day (1948)
Learning support
Boxall, Peter (2015) The Value of the Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Carey, John (1992) The Intellectuals and the the Masses: Pride and
Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia. Faber & Faber: London.
Gay, Peter (2010) Modernism: the Lure of Heresy. London: Random
House.
Huyssen, Andreas (1987) After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass
Culture, Postmodernism.
Lloyd, David and Thomas, Paul (1998) Culture and the State.
London/NY: Routledge.
McKibbin, Ross (1998) Classes and Cultures: England 1918 – 1951.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mulhern, Francis (2000) Culture/ MetaCulture. London/ NY: Routledge.
Mulhern, Francis (2016) Figures of Catastrophe: the Condition of
Cutlure Novel. London: Verso
Naremore, James and Brantlinger, Patrick (1991), Modernity and Mass
Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
North, Michael (1999) Reading 1922: A Return to the Scene of the
Modern. London and NY: Oxford University Press.
Ortega y Gasset, Jose (1929/1930) The Revolt of the Masses. New
Orleans: University of Notre Dame Press.
Radway, Janice (1984) Reading the Romance. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press.
Williams, Raymond (1981) Culture. London: Fontana.
Journals
Comparative Literature and Culture
Textual Practice
Journal of Literary Studies
Review of English Studies
Contemporary Literature
Module descriptor template: updated Aug 2014
Novel: A Forum on Fiction.
Teaching and learning activities
Details of teaching and
learning activities
Lectures (10x 1 hour), Seminars (10 x 2 hour), Individual Tutorials
(2 hours), Film Screenings (8 hours). Some use of multi-media/ICT
where appropriate.
Allocation of study hours (indicative)
Study hours
Where 10 credits = 100 learning hours
SCHEDULED
This is an indication of the number of hours students can expect to
spend in scheduled teaching activities including lectures, seminars,
tutorials, project supervision, demonstrations, practical classes and
workshops, supervised time in workshops/ studios, fieldwork, and
external visits.
GUIDED INDEPENDENT
STUDY
All students are expected to undertake guided independent study
which includes wider reading/ practice, follow-up work, the
completion of assessment tasks, and revisions.
160
PLACEMENT
The placement is a specific type of learning away from the University.
It includes work-based learning and study that occurs overseas.
0
TOTAL STUDY HOURS
40
200
Assessment tasks
Details of assessment on
this module
Students will be required to complete the following tasks:
Assignment 1 – a written presentation (30%). The student must chose
one short text from the 1920s or the 1930s (essay or short
story) and to identify in it where ‘the masses’ appear and what
the possible meanings of that appearance are. A maximum of
1500 words, a minimum of 1000 words. Meets LOs 1 and 2.
Assignment 2 (70%) – a 2500 word essay. To explore two different
fictional treatments of ‘the masses’ paying equal amounts of
attention to the articulation of ‘the masses’ as a social and as a
stylistic phenomenon. Meets LOs 2, 3 and 4.
Each task will be marked on a percentage basis.
Referral Task: reworking of original task/s.
Assessment Criteria
General criteria for assessment are framed by the SEEC descriptors for
Level 6. Against specific criteria, credit will be awarded for:
Task 1
 Demonstrating a critical knowledge of a range of inter-war
novels in terms of their formal innovations and thematic
concerns (LO 1)
 Demonstrating a detailed awareness of the core formative
debates about cultural value in the inter-war years, and an
awareness of how these debates relate to the stylistic patterns
of literary texts (LO2)
Task 2
 Demonstrating a detailed awareness of the core formative
debates about cultural value in the inter-war years, and an
Module descriptor template: updated Aug 2014


awareness of how these debates relate to the stylistic patterns
of literary texts (LO2)
Demonstrating a critical application of different literaryhistorical methods and theoretical approaches to formal
innovation and continuity in the history of the English novel (LO
3).
Demonstrating the connections possible between the literary
forms of fiction (the novel and short stories) and other
discursive formations (polemics, essays, literary criticism,
cultural commentary) (LO4)
Types of assessment task1
% weighting
Indicative list of summative assessment tasks which lead to the award of credit or which are required for
progression.
(or indicate if
component is
pass/fail)
WRITTEN
Written exam
0
COURSEWORK
Written assignment/ essay, report, dissertation, portfolio, project
output, set exercise
100
PRACTICAL
Oral assessment and presentation, practical skills assessment, set
exercise
0
EXAMINATION INFORMATION
Area examination board
Literature, Screen, Media
External examiners
Name
Position and institution
Date appointed
Date tenure
ends
Dr Claire Nally
SL, University of Northumbria
October 2014
September
2018
QUALITY ASSURANCE
Date of first approval
Only complete where this is not the
first version
Date of last revision
Only complete where this is not the
first version
Date of approval for this
version
Approved at validation panel June 2016. Q&S editorial changes made
June 2016
Version number
1
Modules replaced
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this is a replacement
1 Set exercises, which assess the application of knowledge or analytical, problem-solving or evaluative skills, are included
under the type of assessment most appropriate to the particular task.
Module descriptor template: updated Aug 2014
Available as free-standing module?
Module descriptor template: updated Aug 2014
Yes
No
x