Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies

EN265 The Global Novel

Assessed Essay Topics

Term Two Texts

Due: Term 3, Week One, Tuesday 26th April 2016

5000 words

Essay Two 2016

The following topics are suggestions. You may modify them, or devise one of your own, but should do so only in consultation with your seminar tutor.
While you may range as widely as you like in world fiction, not necessarily confining yourself to books studied on the module, you should make detailed reference to at least two of the set texts from Term Two.*

Material used in the essay must not be substantially repeated in examinations.

* Unless you decide to do question 11.

1. “Home” and/or the “local” is the most significant place in Global Novels. Do you agree? Answer with reference to at least two texts from Term Two.

2. “Globalisation” is uneven development. Elaborate, with reference to at least two texts studied in Term Two.

3. In what ways are objects interesting registers of the global in Global Novel texts?

4. New technologies are often read as creating or enabling forms of globalisation. In what ways can this be seen in the course texts?

5. The City/Urbanisation is often a sign of globalisation. Do the texts we have read reflect this?

6. Write about the role played by one or two of the following in any two Global novels: Labour and/or Work; Natural resources; Pioneering; Food; Violence; the Family; the fantastic/supernatural; the figure of the writer and/or the act of writing; transport; “new” media; debt; the transnational corporation; the State.

7. Some critics argue that the globalisation of the novel is something distinct from the story of globalisation in the novel. Referring to at least two texts from Term One, write an essay on the terms of their situation as “global” novels in that first sense (i.e. with primary reference to features such as audience, circulation, media, marketing, reception, etc.)

8. Write on the event and experience of “culture shock” as a registration of the process of globalisation. Answer with reference to at least two novels from Term Two.

9. “Spatial compression and temporal acceleration allow people, ideas, and goods to move with great speed, while also making it possible for individuals, however far apart, to witness events simultaneously.” Gregory Jusdanis, ‘Culture, culture everywhere: the swell of globalisation theory’, Diaspora (Vol. 5, no. 1, 1996).

Using this quote as your platform, write an essay on the phenomenon of “space-time compression” as a feature of the Global Novel.

10. Outline ways in which the “global” (or “local”) element in novels is expressed in narrative (or any other formal) techniques.

11. Make a case for the inclusion of a novel you have read that is not on the syllabus. Your essay must refer to at least one set text by way of comparison and fit the rubric of term one

12. Write an essay detailing how at least two of the texts you have studied in Term Two offer a means of resistance to the process of Globalisation and/or an antipathy to the global.

13. “World” does not necessarily mean “global”. Elaborate, with reference to at least two novels we have read.