English 5313: British Modernist Fiction
With Steven Matthews’ Modernism (Hodder Arnold, 2004) for a guide, we will look at the modernist period in the context of concurrent British and American social and cultural history. We will review salient concepts of narrative theory for an analytical vocabulary adequate to modernist literary innovations in prose fiction. The readings are drawn from the 1910s and ’20s, when modernist experimentalism is consolidated directly in the face of Great Britain’s involvement in World War I and its social and imperial aftermaths.
Texts: D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow and Women in Love (Penguin); Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (Oxford); Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (Penguin); Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories (Penguin); E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (Harvest); and Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (Harvest).
August 27: Introduction
September 3: Labor Day
10: Matthews,
Modernism, chapters 1-3 (1-88)
D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, chapters
1-6
discussion leaders: Amanda, Rebecca, Amy
17: Matthews, Modernism, chapters 4-6 (89-139)
D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, chapters 7-12
discussion leaders: Emily, Lorna, James
24: The Rainbow, to end
Seminar reports: roundtable of 1000-word (@4-page) write-ups on modernism and The Rainbow
"Ursula and the Physics Professor"
October 1: Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
discussion leaders: Shelby, Lacy, Janna
8: Rebecca West, Return of the Soldier
discussion leaders: Raychel, Genessa
15: Midterm essay
22: D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, chapters 1-18
discussion leaders: Lacy, Janna, Kim
29: Women in Love, chapters 19-32
discussion leaders: Raychel, Amanda, Shelby
"Evolution and Entropy in Women in Love"
November 5: Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories
discussion leaders: Rebecca, Genessa
12: Seminar reports: roundtable of 1000-word (@4-page) write-ups on modernist fiction in Women in Love and/or Mansfield
19: E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
discussion leaders: Lorna, Emily, Kim
the British in
India
26: Virginia
Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
discussion leaders: Amy, James
Term paper prospectus due
December 3: Term paper workshop
December 10:
Final Exam, 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.