English 254 - Winter, 2012

20th Century British Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Roy, Parama
CRN: 54708
Time: R 12:10-3:00
Location: 120 Voorhies
Breadth: Later British
Focus: Genre

Description

English 254: Kipling and Conrad
Traditionally Kipling and Conrad have been seen to embody antithetical views of empire in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods; Kipling is identified as an imperial apologist, while Conrad is associated with the scepticism and self-doubt of the modernist period. Yet at least a few of their contemporaries tended to see them as somewhat similar in their interests and outlook, and this point of view is worth taking seriously. When Conrad published Almayer’s Folly (his first novel), at least one reviewer predicted that he “might become the Kipling of the Malay Archipelago.” It is now known, though it was not then, that Conrad was familiar with and had some admiration for the work of Kipling. Reading the two together can help clarify their commonalities and their differences; it can also help us get a purchase on the complex interdependences that constitute literary culture in the heyday of British imperialism. To this end, this course will examine some of the major works of both writers as responses to imperial (and global capitalist) expansion and imperial crisis. Our readings will focus on the following topics and formal questions: imperial frontiers and bureaucracies in the fin de siecle; colonial ennui and loneliness; male friendship and enmity; torture and terror; heterosexuality and metissage; women and half-castes; white poverty, loaferdom, subalternity, class mobility, and entrepreneurship in the colonies; cosmopolitanism; imperial romance, sentimental fiction, naturalism, and realism; and frame narratives, sympathy, and irony.

Texts:
R. Kipling, Norton. Kim: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Zohreh T. Sullivan. ISBN 10: 039396650X
------. The Jungle Books, ed. Daniel Karlin. Penguin. ISBN 10: 0140183167
------. The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories, ed. Louis Cornell. Oxford University Press. ISBN 10: 0199536473
------. “Beyond the Pale,“ “To Be Filed for Reference,” “The Courting of Dinah Shadd,” “On Greenhow Hill,” “Without Benefit of Clergy,” The Mark of the Beast,” “The Return of Imray,” “The Bridge-Builders,” “At the End of the Passage,” “The City of Dreadful Night,” “Recessional,” “The White Man’s Burden,” “Gunga Din,” “If--”
J. Conrad, Almayer’s Folly. Penguin. ISBN 10: 0140180305
------. Lord Jim: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Thomas C. Moser. 2nd edition. Norton. ISBN 10: 0393963357
------. Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Paul B. Armstrong. Norton. ISBN 10: 0393926362
------. Nostromo, ed. Jacques Berthoud. Oxford University Press. ISBN 10: 0199555915
------. “An Outpost of Progress,” “Geography and Some Explorers,” Preface to The Nigger of the “Narcissus”

Secondary readings include essays by Hannah Arendt, Fredric Jameson, Chinua Achebe, Edmund Wilson, Ian Watt, J. Hilllis Miller, Edward Said, Achille Mbembe, V.S. Naipaul, Rebecca Walkowitz, Zohreh T. Sullivan, Benita Parry, and Cesare Casarino.

Grading

Assignments include weekly postings to an online class forum, a book report, and a seminar paper.

Texts

Lord Jim: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Thomas C. Moser. 2nd edition. , J. Conrad
Kim: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Zohreh T. Sullivan. , Rudyard Kipling
Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad
The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories, ed. Louis Cornell., R. Kipling
The Jungle Books, ed. Daniel Karlin., R. Kipling
Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Paul B. Armstrong. , J. Conrad
Nostromo, ed. Jacques Berthoud. , J. Conrad