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.” Modernism is 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.

I don’t expect you to already know how to read poetry; one of my main goals in this class is to teach you how to do it. I will provide you with a “tool box” of techniques by which to break poems down into understandable language. Then, in the second half of the course, we will work on a comparable tool box for fiction.

There will be a 2-3 page paper on Baudelaire due the second week (worth 20% of your grade); a 4-5 page mid-term paper on Rilke and Eliot (40 %), due the sixth week; and a final, 4-5 page, paper on modernist fiction (40%), due exam week. Your entire grade will be based on these three papers.