2017 winners of R. Gapper undergraduate prize announced

We are delighted to announce the winners of this year’s R. Gapper undergraduate essay prize. Submissions this year covered a wide range of periods and topics (literature, language and thought from the Medieval era to the 21st century; cinema; history; linguistics; politics; disability studies; critical theory) and the shortlisting committee was impressed by the breadth and quality of the entries.

The winner of the 2017 prize is:

Peter Tellouche (Oxford): ‘The rich detail with which the experience of time is treated in individual sentences is hard to reconcile with the big-time temporality of Proust’s novel as a whole.’ Discuss.

The shortlisted entries were:

Rachel Hindmarsh (Bristol), ‘Abnormal Bodies: The Politics of Resemblance and Interpretation in Rabelais’s Le Quart Livre and Ronsard’s political poetry’

Gabrielle Imbert (KCL), ‘The representation of suffering in much contemporary women’s writing in French is characterized by a troublingly masochistic enjoyment of women’s subordinate position.’ Discuss with reference to AT LEAST TWO texts you have studied for this course. (Djebar, Ernaux)

Elizabeth Kelleher (UC Cork), ‘Discuss critically the extent to which theories of trauma are useful for understanding experience. Your answer should draw on at least 2 of the narratives and at least 2 of the theories studied during this course.’

Lucy Wilkinson (Sheffield), ‘Language purism and Martinican Creole: a linguistic paradox’

Congratulations to the winners and shortlisted entrants!