English 254 - Spring, 2023

20th-Century British Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Dobbins, Gregory
CRN: 62299
Time: R 3:10-6:00pm
Location: 120 Voorhies
Breadth: Later British
Focus: Genre, Method

Description

Topic: High Modernism One Hundred Years after The Waste Land

While the specific beginning of Modernism is open to interpretation depending upon which language, location, and/or medium one is inclined to argue for, it is much easier to identify the year 1922 as a specific foundational moment that marks the inception of High Modernist writing in the English literary tradition. In that year, the initial publication of two works in particular-- Joyce's 'Ulysses' in February 1922 and Eliot's 'The Waste Land' in October 1922-- dramatically rearranged the formal and thematic contours of fiction and poetry respectively, and things (at least as one hundred years worth of Modernist Studies would have it) were never the same again. Over time, positions which grappled with the innovations and experiments of either text evolved into orthodoxies and critical traditions of their own; yet, as critics like Megan Quigley and others have recently reminded us, events like literary centenaries present ideal opportunities to not only critically interrogate such traditions, but to re-read the initial texts to appraise how they might anticipate and speak to contemporary concerns that might not have been as visible one hundred years ago.

Having honored the centenary of 'Ulysses' last year, it is now time to reconsider Eliot. This seminar proposes to focus on the impact 'The Waste Land' made upon Modernist writing in English in the first two decades after its publication. We will devote the beginning of the quarter to an intensive reading/re-reading of 'The Waste Land' and various related texts; we will then seek to track what possible impact the various innovations apparant in that text made upon subsequent Modernist works of literature. The final syllabus is not set at this point, but it is likely to include the canonical works by Yeats, Pound, Woolf, and H.D. listed below (which, not coincidentally, in most cases are also on the prelim reading lists) as well as related supplementary contextual materials.

A note on textbooks: for a number of reasons, textbooks for this class will NOT be ordered through the campus bookstore. I will contact students enrolled in the class through Canvas at least one week prior to the beginning of the quarter to specify which editions (if need be) of the primary texts to order on your own and to begin to make PDF's available. You should obtain a physical copy of the Norton critical edition of 'The Waste Land' edited by Michael North (ISBN# 978-0-393-97499-7) due to the necessity of annotations and its abundance of contextual material. I also recommend a physical copy of the Harvest annotated edition of 'Mrs. Dalloway' (ISBN # 978-0-15-603035-9) because the book will work much better if the class is all on the same page. Finally, I recommend the New Directions edition of H.D.'s 'Trilogy' (978-0-8112-1399-8) because it too is a work best approached with recourse to annotations.

Grading

Requirements:

-- Mandatory weekly attendance and discussion of the reading assignments; this will also entail some preparatory work in advance of class submitted to Canvas the day before scheduled classes. A class presentation is also a possibility.

-- Final project: since this course is directed towards both PhD. and CW MFA students in equal measure, there are two possibilities given your possible needs:

a. a critical proto-essay (roughly 12-15 pages or so) which could serve as a draft of a conference talk and begins to move in the direction of a possible article, dissertation chapter, etc.

or

b. a work of creative non-fiction prose (roughly 12-15 pages) that engages with some specific facet of one of the primary texts and addresses how that quality impacts upon (or hypothetically could impact upon?) your own writing.

Texts

The Wasteland (and related poems and criticism), T.S. Eliot
Blast #1
Michael Robartes and the Dancer, W.B. Yeats
The Tower, W.B. Yeats
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Selections from 'Personae' and 'A Draft of XXX Cantos', Ezra Pound
Trilogy/Tribute to Freud, H.D.