Department of English

We will focus on one single year in order to explore as many texts and cultural manifestations as possible while keeping one central question in mind: how "advanced" was the state of culture in 1913 just before WWI erupted and changed the whole of Europe, durably altering its links with the US? Was international Modernism already under way and then changed, inflected by the war, or did it follow an unbroken course until 1922? A close examination of a number of poetic, novelistic and musical works in different countries should allow us to find answers to this question. In any case, 1913 was a crucial year that brought about a spate of extremely original works in various media. We will begin by reading Christopher Butcher's Early Modernism as well as texts by Pound, H.D., Eliot, Apollinaire, Cather, Williams, Rilke, Thomas Mann, Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Frost and Proust. We will listen to musical pieces by Stravinsky and Schönberg. We will study the Armory show and account for differences between European and American painting in 1913.

1. Butcher's Early Modernism 1 and 2.
2. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Schoenberg's early pieces.
3.    The Armory Show in New York and Malevich's Suprematism.
4.    Imagism in London, Futurism in Italy.
5.    The New Freewoman in London.
6.    Yeats and Pound at Stone Cottage.
7.    Apollinaire's Alcools.
8.    Cather's O Pionneers!
9.     William Carlos Williams, The Tempers .
10.    Stein in 1913 (Works, vol. 1, p. 378-96).
11.     Rilke's Duino Elegies.
12.    Kafka's "Metamorphosis"
13.    Mann's "Death in Venice"
14.    D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and early poems.
15.    Frost's A Boy's Will.
16.     Proust's Swann's Way.