School of English
Sophister Module Description Template 2021-22
Full Name: The Art of Writing War: David Jones’s In Parenthesis
Short Name: David Jones’s In Parenthesis
Lecturer Name and Email Address: Dr Rosie Lavan, [email protected]
ECTS Weighting: 10
Semester Taught: HT
Year: JS
Module Content:
In Parenthesis is a poem of seven parts. We will devote a week to each part of the poem, discussing our readings and observations in detail. This will be supplemented by close attention to some of Jones’s key essays, his visual art, and the work of his contemporaries, in art and poetry.
Learning Outcomes:
On successful completion of these course, students should be able to:
1. Analyse and appraise Jones’s poetry, with a particular sensitivity to questions of language, form, and allusion
2. Discuss In Parenthesis in relation to Jones’s visual art and critical prose, and in relation to the literature and visual art of his contemporaries
3. Evaluate a range of theoretical and critical arguments, and challenge, extend, or synthesise them
4. Propose and justify their own readings of In Parenthesis and other works encountered on the module
5. Reflect on the issues raised by this module, and apply insights and methodologies developed here elsewhere in their study
Learning Aims:
This module will focus on David Jones’s In Parenthesis (1937). Despite his relative obscurity, Jones is an essential figure in the story of British Modernism, both in poetry and in visual art, and the years since the centenary of the First World War have seen a significant resurgence of critical interest in his work. In Parenthesis, his long poem based on his own experience as a soldier in World War One, was recognized at the time of its publication as a major work. In this module, we will read the poem closely, considering issues including
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Assessment Details:
• Type of Assessment: Continuous • Research Exercise due week 6 (2000 words): 30% • Essay due at the end of term (4000 words) 70% • Number of Components: Two • Word Count of Component(s): 2000 and 4000 • Percentage Value of Component(s): 30%; 70%
Preliminary Reading List:
Primary Texts
David Jones, In Parenthesis – any Faber edition.
Jones’s essays were collected in the Faber volumes Epoch and Artist and Dai Greatcoat: selected essays will be made available as pdfs.
Similarly, online/pdf access to examples of Jones’s visual art will be provided. For those wishing to explore this in advance, I would recommend Ariane Bankes and Paul Hills, The Art of David Jones: Vision and Memory (Farnham: Lund Humphries, 2015).
Recommended Secondary Reading
Alldritt, Keith, David Jones: Writer and Artist (London: Constable, 2003).
Armstrong, Tim, Modernism: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Polity, 2005).
Blamires, David, David Jones: Artist and Writer (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971).
Blissett, William, The Long Conversation: A Memoir of David Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
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Callison, Jamie, Paul Fiddes, Anna Johnson and Erik Tonning eds., David Jones: A Christian Modernist? (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
Danius, Sara, The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception, and Aesthetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).
Das, Santanu, Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Dilworth, Thomas, David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet (London: Cape, 2017).
---, Reading David Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008).
Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Hills, Paul, ed., David Jones: Artist and Poet (Warwick Studies in the European Humanities. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997).
McLoughlin, Kate, Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Miles, Jonathan, and Derek Shiel, David Jones: The Maker Unmade (Bridgend: Seren, 1995).
Sherry, Vincent, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
---, The Great War and the Language of Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Staudt, Kathleen Henderson, At the Turn of a Civilization: David Jones and Modern Poetics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).
Stewart, Susan, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Svensden, Anna, and Jasmine Hunter Evans eds., Religion & Literature 49:1 (Spring 2017) – Special Issue: David Jones: Towards a Theology of History.
Thacker, Andrew, Moving Through Modernity: Space and Geography in Modernism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).
Whitworth, Michael H., Einstein’s Wake: Relativity, Metaphor, and Modernist Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Please note:
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• Curricular information is subject to change. • Information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current academic year only and is subject to change.
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