TITLE OF THE COURSE: TRENDS OF MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM Course code: LLT5005 Course group: C Faculty: HUMANITIES Study program: LITERATURE AND PRESS Masterʼs Level: Autumn Semester:

ECTS credits: 6 Language of instruction ENGLISH Assoc. prof. Vijolė Višomirskytė Course lecturer/s: Assoc. prof. Indrė Žakevičienė The aim of this course is to deepen students' knowledge and understanding of a) the major features of modernism and postmodernism trends; b) various theoretical frameworks, which have been designed to explore them and with the help of which students could further explore the literary and cultural phenomena and processes. Modernist and postmodernist movements in literature, art, Short course description: philosophy, and literary theory are studied focusing on the main features of (post)modernist poetics and on the concepts proposed by and issues discussed by the (post)modernist theorists. The course is taught by a combination of lectures, seminars, discussions, close reading and analysis both of literary texts and theoretical works; students conduct a comparative problematic case study of Lithuanian literature. Aesthetics of modernism and postmodernism; systematization of the features of non-classical and post- nonclassical philosophy and aesthetics; mass culture and postmodernism; science and postmodernism. Theoretical grounds of postmodern aesthetics — postfreudism, poststructuralism, deconstruction. Course content: Postmodernism as the concept of "spirit of the time" of the end of the twentieth century. Modernism and the question of literary tradition; aesthetics and modernism. Literary ethics in the field of (post)modernism. The conception of narrative ethics. Intersections and contradictions of literary ethics and narrative ethics. Psychoanalytic instrument. Sigmund Freud’s and Carl Jung's psychoanalysis. Text and reading in Roland Barthes’ approach. Reflections on literature and literary studies in Barthes’ writings. Literature and its major categories of readings. What is discourse? Discourse genres. Language and discourse. Text and Discourse. Intertextuality in postmodern culture. Historiographic metafiction. Deconstruction as a text interpretation theory. Literature as Writing. Writing as a game. Avant-garde, neo-avant-garde and (post)modernism. Modernist epistemological dominant and postmodernist ontological dominant (McHale). Postmodern virtualities and postmodern subject.

Grading and evaluating student Written paper I – 10 %, written paper II – 10 %, midterm – work in class and/or at the final 20 %, seminar work— 20%, exam – 40 % final mark. exam:

Basic materials: 1. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. 2. Călinescu, Mate. Five faces of modernity: modernism, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch, postmodernism. 3. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. 4. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents. 5. Jameson, Fredric. A Singular modernity. 6. Lyotard, Jean-François. Postmodern fables. 7. McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. 8. Barthes, Roland. S/Z.

Supplementary materials: Required reading and additional 1. Cahoone, Lawrence E., ed. From Modernism to study material Postmodernism: An Anthology Expanded 2. Foucault M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 3. Freud, Sigmund. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego: Chapter VII. Identification. 4. Hoffmann, Gerhard. From modernism to postmodernism; concepts and strategies of postmodern American fiction. 5. Love, Heather. Close but not deep: Literary Ethics and the Descriptive Turn in New Literary History 6. McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. 7. Plumer, Gilbert and Louis Groarke. Cognition and Literary Ethical Criticism. Additional information (if applicable)