English 137N - Spring, 2011

British Literature 1900-1945

Class Information

Instructor: Dobbins, Gregory
CRN: 53187
Time: TR 10:30-11:50
Location: 118 Olson

Description

This course will provide a survey of literature produced in the first half of the twentieth century and will focus on the aesthetics and politics of modernism. We will begin with works written during the apex of the British Empire at the turn of the century and complete the quarter with a consideration of the aftermath of WWII. Along the way we will consider the numerous and profound political, social, and cultural changes that occurred during this period as we seek to understand what impact such transformations of the world made upon British literary conventions. In doing so, we will be reading works by Joseph Conrad, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Rebecca West, H.D., T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Flann O'Brien, and Samuel Beckett.





Grading

2 essays (5-7 pages)—25% each (50% in all)
Short Writing Assignment—15%
Final exam—25%
Class Participation—10%

Texts

Potrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien
Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume F, Greenblatt, ed.