Modernist Britsh Literature

Course Summary

This course examines the loosely-defined movement in Anglophone literature known as modernism, specifically in relation to British literature written over a roughly 50-year period. Readings will not only include prose, poetry, and nonfiction from the primary time period being studied itself, but also more theoretical readings intended to help illuminate the studied content. You will learn about the cultural currents at play throughout each work being studied, be it the intense political turmoil, the advent of psychoanalysis, or the development of new philosophical systems. You will read monumental works of British literature not only as a passive observer, but as an active participant, in conversation with both the author and scholars who have interpreted such works.

Through the reading, discussion, and analysis of these challenging yet illuminating texts, this course seeks to accomplish several key goals:

1. Developing as a Reader: Reading is difficult, and many of the novels, poems, and theoretical works that will be dicussed here are especially challenging. Through perserverance, though, you will develop in this course the tools to engage critically with any text you come across, be it fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose.
2. Literary Worldliness: Participating in academic conversations about literature can feel like trying to translate between a multitude of different languages. It can be incredibly alienating to hear jargon one doesn't understand being casually thrown about in academic conversations on literature. The theoretical texts in this course aims to help foster a sense of literary "worldliness," allowing you to better communicate in the various "dialects" that scholars often resort to. In particular, this course will look at three of these major "dialects:" philosophy, psychoanalysis, and gender/sexuality. Readings related to each of these categories will be tied in to every primary text being read, and will serve as the springboard for deep discussions about the primary texts.
3. Independent Interpretation: By participating in this course, you will be both student and scholar; I don't expect you to simply listen to my perspective and regurgitate it back to me, but instead bring your own views in conversation with mine. This could be through asserting a reading independent of my own, or it could be through something as simple as asking a question about a character in a novel or a line of a poem. With every text, you will be given opportunities to partake in discussion pertaining to certain aspects of the text by answerin or raising questions. There will be an essay at the end of the course that will serve as the culmination of the interpretative skills you have learned. To everything that has been said, this, of course, requires something: your participation. This means you will be expected to both have read the texts and written the analyses. The use of AI will only serve to limit what you take away from this course, as what it writes does not come from your mind. I would much rather read an imperfect essay written by a human mind than something written by AI.

Reading List

Novels

1. Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness (1899)
2. Rudyard Kipling: Kim (1901)
3. John Galsworthy: The Man of Property (1906)
4. Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent (1907)
5. E.M. Forster: A Room With a View (1908)
6. E.M. Forster: Howards End (1910)
7. D.H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers (1913)
8. Ford Madox Ford: The Good Soldier (1915)
9. W. Somerset Maugham: Of Human Bondage (1915)
10. Dorothy Richardson: Pointed Roofs (1915)
11. D.H. Lawrence: The Rainbow (1915)
12. James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
13. D.H. Lawrence: Women in Love (1920)
14. James Joyce: Ulysses (1922)
15. E.M. Forster: A Passage to India (1924)
16. Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
17. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
18. Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse (1927)
19. Evelyn Waugh: Decline and Fall (1928)
20. D.H. Lawrence: Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)
21. Radclyffe Hall: The Well of Loneliness (1928)
22. Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
23. Virginia Woolf: The Waves (1931)
24. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
25. Elizabeth Bowen: The Death of the Heart (1938)
26. Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca (1938)
27. Jean Rhys: Good Morning, Midnight (1939)
28. Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory (1940)
29. George Orwell: Animal Farm (1945)
30. Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Poetry

1. A.E. Housman: A Shropshire Lad (1896)
2. Robert Graves: Over the Brazier (1916)
3. T.S. Eliot: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917)
4. Thomas Hardy: Moments of Vision (1917)
5. Siegfried Sassoon: Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)
6. T.S. Eliot: "The Waste Land" (1922)
7. D.H. Lawrence: Birds, Beasts, and Flowers (1923)
8. Mina Loy: Lunar Baedeker (1923)
9. W.B. Yeats: The Tower (1928)
10. W.H. Auden: Another Time (1940)

Theory

1. Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
2. Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals (1887)

Lessons

Lessons are sectioned off on a weekly basis, with prose, poetry, and theory readings. Following readings, a series of discussion questions will be posted to encourage discourse about the texts.

Week 1

1. Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
2. A.E. Housman: A Shropshire Lad, II. "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now"
3. Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil, §146 & 260
4. Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals, §10-14

Discussion: Consider the excerpts from Nietzsche. In conversation with Heart of Darkness, how might Nietzsche's conception of morals align with the characters and plot Conrad develops? Write a response to this question of 300 words or more. Pose at least one question of your own. This question could be related to Nietzsche, or it could be related to your personal interests. Respond to at least two posts made by others.