Modern Romance
Rules and Advice for Assessed Essays
Novels
CatherineCooksons classic Kate Hannigan (1950)
MaeveBinchys Circle of Friends (1990)
RosamundePilchers The Shell Seekers (1987).
Length c.6000 words.
This does not include a cover sheet, table contents, andbibliography.
Follow The MLA Style sheet 7-8th edition (do not mixthem up) It is up to you to use footnotes or brackets in the text forreferences.
Your bibliography should contain around 10 to 20 entries. Usemonographs and collections of essays as well as from periodicals. Avoidoverusing and be critical of Internet sources.
Topics: to be agreed with the course tutor. One of the three novelsof the seminar must be covered. You may compare and contrast two or three, ifyou wish, or compare and contrast a novel from the course with another or anadaptation. Please remember: if you use a different media format ( e.g a filmor a graphic novel) you must also use the relevant concepts and terminology forits analysis.
Your essay should display methodological and theoretical awareness.This means that you should know-and say-what you are doing, either in theintroduction or, if more suitable, a section on the method. If you do a genderanalysis; for example, you need to say which gender concepts you use. If you doone on class, the same applies, etc.
Be specifical and historical. Do not generalize about women orpeople I remember you talking about fictional characters in history that havea specific position in terms of class, education, wealth, income, religion,etc. Do not apply modern attitude and views uncritically on characters formearlier periods.
Remember that you are dealing with literature. Which strategies areused to create sympathy, atmosphere, etc ? Use what you have learned in yourintroductions
Your essay should have a question or hypothesis, and in a thesis orstatement. This can be open and ambivalent,but it has to be there. It is reached by logical argument and the analysis ofselected passages from the text (s). This means that you should plan your essaycarefully before starting to write it. Simply re-telling the storyand making your own value judgment is not a critical analysis.
Your essay must display correct and idiomatic use of English.Employ a good dictionary, and do not rely on an automatic spellchecker.
Your statements
Romance can be a flexible genre. Romance novels can be deal withrelevant contemporary socio-political and religious themes alongside the moreconventional romantic plot.
Modern Romance can turn out to be quite complex and thus, offer themselves for careful literary analysis. If readagainst the backdrop of its temporal/ geographical setting, a Romance novel cantell its readers quite a lot about the circumstances, behavioral expectations,assumptions, beliefs, gender roles, etc of that particular time and place andalso something about their subversion.
I was surprised about the different gender roles presented in eachof the books, i.e that a fixed role regarding gender for either woman or mendoes not exist.
Your remaining questions and issues
Cancircle of Friends still be considered a romance novel? Where are the limits ofromance if a love story is usually part of almost all novels?
Ismodern Romance a static or a progressive genre?
Arethe romance novels that we have discussed in our seminar applicable forteaching at school, e.g in 11th or 12th grade? Whichnovel (of the three we read) would you recommend to discuss with students atschool? How could I persuade my studies to lay down their prejudices andactually read a book like those we read in this seminar?
Your remaining questions and issues
Whatmakes any literature or writing worthy of being analyzed in an academicsetting?
Whyare the movie adaptations of the novels we read so flat?
Whywas Rosamunde Plicher more or less an one hit wonder everywhere else but inGermany?
Seminar:
The seminar addressed a much-maligned genrethat is often denounced as trivial. It examined three popular examples tochallenge (but perhaps also partly confirm) stereotypes: Catherine Cooksonsclassic Kate Hannigan (1950), Maeve Binchys Circle of Friends (1990),and Rosamunde Pilchers The Shell Seekers (1987). Issues addressed included gender and sexuality, class, andregion, but also age. Moreover, the seminar used this popular mode of fictionto ask general questions about prose narrative, characterisation, and readerguidance that can also be applied to other forms of fiction.
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