British Literature 1900-1945
Class Information
Instructor: Dobbins, Gregory
CRN: 23457
Time: TR 4:40-6:00
Location: 118 Olson
GE Areas: World Cultures Writing Experience
Description
This course will serve as a survey of literature produced in the first half of the twentieth century-- in, around, and in relation to the designation "British"-- 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 W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, H.D., T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, George Lamming, and Samuel Beckett. (Note: this list or writers/texts might change slightly by the beginning of Winter Quarter).
Grading
Two essays, a close-reading written assignment, frequent discussion submissions on each work, and a take-home final exam.
Texts
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Trilogy, H.D.
In the Castle of My Skin, George Lamming
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett