We will read a variety of poems and fictional works from France, Germany, England, and the U.S. in order to get a sense of the complex phenomenon called “modernism,” a style or cluster of styles of writing that flourished from roughly 1910-1930, but the beginnings of which can be traced to France in the mid-19th century. There is no simple definition of what “modernism” means; like other period terms in literary theory (e.g., “romanticism” or “realism”), it refers not to any single quality of literary works but to a diverse set of stylistic characteristics, which get mixed and matched differently by different authors. The only way to get a sense of how the term works is to read a number of texts that are labeled with it and see how they are similar and how they are different.

We will also be concerned with the /methodology/ of the study of literature and specifically with the method called /formalism. /Formalism in criticism developed in close contact with modernism in literature (for example, T.S. Eliot is both one of the central modernist poets and one of the fathers of formalism); formalism could thus be called “modernist literary criticism.” *In my class lectures I will continually stress formalist methods of reading, and in the papers you write you will be expected to develop skill in these methods.*

There will be a 2-3 page paper on Baudelaire due the third week, followed by a 4-5 page mid-term paper on Rilke and Eliot, and a final paper, 4-5 pages, on modernist fiction.