ENGL 3437 - Twentieth-Century British Literature

(3) Credit Hours
Prerequisite: Successful completion of ENGL 1102 and (ENGL 2110, ENGL 2111, ENGL 2112, ENGL 2120, ENGL 2121, ENGL 2122, ENGL 2130, ENGL 2131 or ENGL 2132 ) with a grade of “C” or better or by permission of instructor
This course is designed to expose students to the literature produced in England throughout the 20th century. Students will encounter writing from pre- to High- to post-modernism, from the height to the fall of the British Empire, and from before, during, and after World Wars I and II. Course readings will expose students to the dominant themes, literary techniques, and historical realities that influenced British writing throughout the century. Furthermore, the course will contextual the British experience through the larger lens of the cultural and political climates within and around England. Course material will be comprised of poetry, fiction, and drama that span the time period and the various perspectives, forces, and movements that shaped it. In so doing, the course will enable students to think about literary texts as both artistic productions and historical artifacts, capable of illuminating the broad history of humanistic inquiry and the specific realities that inform that inquiry. Authors may include Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, George Orwell, W.B. Yeats, H.D., Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureshi, Samuel Beckett, Stevie Smith, Seamus Heaney, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, and Pat Barker.