Much of the allure of Modernist writing derives from the shifts in both perspective and technique which characterize it. In this course, we'll examine these innovations in light of the social changes that pushed writers (and all artists) of this period to forge new modes of expression. Each of the authors we will study was, in his or her own way, breaking from a narrative tradition they found inadequate for expression of the contemporary human experience. What, exactly, does Modernism reject, and what, if anything, does it affirm in its place? What aspects of this heritage have endured, and with what repercussions?

We'll read works by Hardy, Conrad, Hemingway, Hurston, and Salinger, as well as some literary criticism, to trace the shifts in ideology that characterized the close of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries in English fiction.