Department of English

This course will compare the lives and literary reputation of George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway though a study of selected works by each author. We'll trace the effects of journalism on their style, and we'll trace the effects of journalism on their style, and we'll relate their writing to the major public events of their lives--World War I, expatriatism in Paris, the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. We'll also pay special attention to the differences in American and British culture and trace the contrasting paths they took as literary modernists-Hemingway as the self-reliant artist, wary of political movements, and Orwell as the committed socialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-Stalinist. Besides many of Hemingway's short stories and Orwell's essays, we'll read major works like A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Down and Out in Paris and London, A Moveable Feast, Homage to Catalonia, and 1984. There will be several one-page response papers, a mid-term essay, and a final paper of 6-8 pages in length.