Department of English

This course will trace the development of British literature across the 20th century. We will read English and Irish literature in a variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, and drama. Discussions will focus on British colonialism, the first and second world wars, changing attitudes toward sexuality, the conflict between the individual self and societal or familial expectations, and the role and function of the literary arts across this century. The literature of the 20th century will serve as a guide to understanding and analyzing the phenomenal changes that occured within it, and to define what this century has come to signify for world and literary history. Readings may include works by Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Joseph Conrad, G.B. Shaw, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, D.M. Thomas, and Jeanette Winterson.

Requirements: two short papers, a midterm, and a final exam.